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The Landscape Beautiful 




THE POTATO PATCH 

ll'iu. H. Zcrhc 



The 

Landscape Beautiful 



A Study of the Utility of the Natural 
Landscape, Its Relation to Human Life 
and Happiness, With the Application of 
These Principles in Landscape Garden- 
ing, and in Art in General 



By 
FRANK A. WAUGH 



ILLUSTRATED 

BY MEMBERS OF THE POSTAL PHOTOGRAPHIC CLUB 



NEW YORK 

ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 
1910 






Cp 



l^^"' 



Copyright, 19t*, by 
ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 



Printed in U. S. A. 



CCi.A2:iviei4U 



To the Postal Photographic Club 

^^^HE illustrations in the book will seem 
^^ like old friends to you, I know. The orig- 
inals are yours. They have all gone the 
rounds in our albums, and you have criticised 
and praised them with that candor and 
generosity so characteristic of our fraternity. 
Several of them have been prize winners by 
judgment of your suffrages. In the issue of 
the book I am deeply grateful to you all, 
and especially to those particular members 
who graciously loaned their best pictures for 
the improvement of my essays. 

In a large way you have all helped in 
the making of this book, for the principles, 
opinions and observations here set down 
have nearly all borne the heat of discussion 
with you in the club note-books. These 
friendly discussions in which I have par- 
ticipated for more than a decade, have been 
like a liberal education to me. The Postal 
Photographic Club has been my school of 
art, — my photographic alma mater, if I 
might call myself a reputable graduate, — 
and you have been at once my teachers and 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

my classmates. I think I may justly love 
you a little, and, wishing to earn your indul- 
gent remembrance, may proffer you this 
memento of my labors. 

These essays, if you try to read them, 
may seem less familiar than the pictures, 
but even the farthest-fetched of them will not 
be wholly strange, I hope, seeing how often 
we have gone over such matters together. 
Every theme bends to the attempt to see 
the beauty that is in the world, and to make 
that beauty visible, worth while, and regnant 
in the lives of men and women. For we all 
need to know and follow beauty as we need 
to know and follow truth and duty. 

F. A. WAUGH. 

Amherst, Massachusetts, 
January, 19x0. 



VI 



Program of Essays 

PAGE 

1. On the Relation of Landscape to Life ii 

2. On the Ministry of Trees ... 25 

3. On Some Other Elements of Land- 

scape . . . . . . . . . 39 

4. On Looking at the Sky . . 53 

5. On the Weather 67 

6. On the Art Which Mends Nature . 81 

7. Concerning the American Land- 

scape 95 

8. On American Landscape Gardening 1 1 1 

9. As to the Field of Criticism . .135 

10. On American Landscape Gardeners 149 

11. On American Masterpieces of Land- 

scape Architecture 177 

12. On the Improvement of the Open 

Country 203 

13. On the Ownership of Scenery . 223 

vii 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

PAGE 

14. On the Decorative Use of Landscape 237 

15. As to Landscape in Literature . .249 

16. On the Beauty of Landscape Psy- 

chologically Considered . .265 

17. Suggesting Some Practical Applica- 

tions 297 

Summary . , . ;. , ,.. . . 321 

xnocx • • ;, uj [t< i,j ;,j , . 37 



List of Illustrations 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Potato Patch Frontispiece 

Digging Quahaugs .,.,.,,.... i6 ^ 
A Halt for Lunch ...,,.,... 17 

Helping Grandpa 24 

At the Well 25 

Edge of the Woods 32,' 

Pine Trees . 33 

The Open Sea 48, 

River Scene 49 

Looking up the Valley ,., . 56 ' 

Afternoon Clouds 57 

Winter Woods 72 

Sunlight and Breeze 73 

Royal Palm Avenue 88 -^ 

Souvenir of Petit Trianon, Versailles ... 89 

The Desert 104 

The Path Along the Hillside ...... 105 

In the Park 120 

Rhododendrons 121 

Returning to the Fold . . . ..... 136 

Veterans 137 

Along the Stream ......... 152 

Bend of the River 153 

Flood-tide at Duck Island . . . ,. . . 160 

ix 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Frog Pond i6i 

The Hillside 176'' 

The Four-arch Bridge . 177 

Farm Road in Winter 184'' 

Earth's Awakening 185 

Where the Waters Meet 208 "^ 

Summer Landscape 209 

In Gloucester Harbor 224 •- 

Aurora Lake 225 

The River Path 232 / 

Sand and Sea 233 

Pine Trees, Cape Cod 240 y 

A Path in the Snow 241 

The Hand to the Plow 256 

Haying Time 257 

Old Friends 264 

The Path to the Woods 265 

Brown October 272 

The Meadow Brook 273 

"Women Must Wait" 280 

The Charles River 281 

The Fragrant Fruit Trees, Blossom Full . 304 

The Ford 305 

Woodland Mist 312 

The Harvest Field 313 

z 



ESSAY NUMBER ONE 

On the Relation of Land- 
scape to Life 



The difference between landscape and land- 
scape is small, but there is a great difference in be- 
holders. 

There is nothing so wonderful in an}) landscape 
as the necessity of being beautiful, under which 
ever}) landscape lies. 

Emerson, 

"Nature" 

5mi7e O voluptuous cool-breath* d earth! 
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 
Earth of departed sunset — earth of the 

mountains mist^-topt! 
Earth of the vitreous power of the full 

moon just tinged with blue! 
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide 

of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gra}) of clouds 

brighter and clearer for m}) sa^e! 
Far swooping elbow'd earth — rich 

apple-blossomed earth! 
Smile for })our lover comes — 
Prodigal, })ou have given me love — therefore 

I to you give love! 
O unspeakable, passionate love! 

Walt Whitman, 

"Song of Myself" 



13 



^he Landscape Beautiful 



ON THE RELATION OF LANDSCAPE 
TO LIFE 

'^^HAT charming essayist who wrote a 
^^ lecture on the relation of literature to 

life did not hesitate to claim every- 
thing for literature. He made it his thesis 
that literature is really the whole stream 
of life so far as the thoughts and passions 
of mankind have any continuity through 
the generations. It would be too much to 
say of landscape that it is the whole of life, 
but this is true at least, that life, as we 
know it, could not exist apart from the 
landscape. 

Human life has a few fundamentally 
necessary conditions, such as food, speech, a 
social organization, a certain conception of 
the Infinite Power, and a ready contact with 
the material world. I have not put litera- 
ture in this category. This may look like 
taking the negative against Charles Dudley 

15 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Warner's proposition; but, in the first place, 
the foregoing list is not intended to be a 
complete one; and, in the second place, I 
am not convinced that literature is really 
one of the conditions of life. It seems to 
me to be rather one of its products. 

Landscape is one of the fundamental 
conditions. The contact with the physical 
world is threefold— carnal, intellectual and 
spiritual. Out of the earth we first get sub- 
sistence for the body; second, our ideas of 
things and phenomena; and third, our ex- 
perience of beauty and our clue to the para- 
dise not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens. In the first order of earth contact 
we may or may not know the landscape. 
The miner, toiling in the coal shaft, may 
never realize to himself the existence of the 
sky, the water and the green rolling hills. 
But the farmer plows and sows and harvests 
the landscape, and thus in his carnal strug- 
gle for food comes into conscious and be- 
nign relationship with the fields. In the 
second order of contact with the physical 
world, the landscape is woven into the very 
fiber of all our mental processes. Our 
knowledge of space and number, and all the 
most elementary ideas psychology has ever 

16 




o _^ 

J3 "Si 

< 2 

i 1 

o 




o 

^ ■£ 

o -; 

(I, ^ 

i ^ 



ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE 

named, are suggested, illustrated and 
demonstrated to us by what we see in the 
external world out-of-doors. But most of 
all the landscape becomes a necessary con- 
dition of our human life when we come 
into contact with it through our aesthetic 
and spiritual faculties. 

It is at this point that landscape be- 
comes indispensable. Robinson Crusoe lived 
a very human sort of life with the outdoor 
world and without society. Jeremiah in 
the pit had human society, but no land- 
scape. Who would not prefer to be Crusoe? 

What notion of beauty could any one 
have who had never seen the landscape? 
Of her first introduction to society Miranda 
was able to exclaim, "How beauteous man- 
kind is!" But if all her life she had been 
locked into a dungeon or a palace what 
might she have cried on her first sight of 
the beautiful world? 

In this life we are taught chiefly by 
three great agencies — by other men, by 
the printed page, and by the landscape; 
that is, by what we see of the natural world. 
Of these three Adam at first had only the 
landscape, showing this to be the most 
primitive and elementary of all. And it is 

17 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

noteworthy (with all high respect to 
Mother Eve), that when human society, 
the next great teacher, entered the world, 
sorrow came also. So that from the first 
day till now the one has taught us of pain 
and sin (and forgiveness, to be sure!), while 
the other has taught of peace and beauty 
and hope. 

It is most simply and emphatically true 
that the landscape is our chief teacher in 
the world of beauty. The lake, the river, 
the hills, the sky, the sunset, these (with 
the human form) are the great themes of 
all art. Painting, poetry and music en- 
deavor to interpret to us what here we 
may see face to face. And what part of 
most men's lives is painting or music, 
or even poetry and architecture, beside the 
landscape? Once or twice in a lifetime we 
visit the great art gallery, or we hear the 
best music; but every day we have the ever- 
lasting hills. Occasionally a line of poetry 
stirs our whole soul; but every breath of 
wind in the pine-trees can tell the same 
story. 

The landscape is omnipresent. All 
these other things are accidental and 
escapable. It is like the air that we breathe 

18 



ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE 

sleeping or waking compared with the 
champagne that we taste once a year at the 
annual reunion. The champagne costs 
more: we are apt to notice its effects more. 
Very likely it gives us a headache. 

One can take a long ocean trip and rid 
himself of the newspapers. One can go to 
Bolivia or Hudson's Bay and get away 
from society. But even in New York or 
Paris it is hard to evade the landscape. 
Some persons there are in the slums of the 
great cities who come near doing it; but 
they are comparatively few, and their 
wretched condition shows too well what 
the penalty is. And, simply enough, those 
philanthropists who are seeking to help 
such wretched ones — submerged in society 
— use as a chief means the introduction of 
more landscape into their lives. 

For landscape is one of the greatest 
curative agencies. Hospitals are built in 
the country whenever that is possible. The 
fresh-air fund is established to provide sick 
and dying ones with some touch of the 
healing landscape. The fashionable physi- 
cians prescribe country air and change of 
scenery for their wealthy patients. 

The landscape has almost unthinkable 

19 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

sanitative power. When a man's brains or 
nerves have become so clogged or worn by 
city excitements that they can no longer 
perform their functions, he goes back to the 
fields and woods to be renovated. A wise 
man takes regular baths to keep his body 
clean. The mind, which is more sensitive 
to all disturbances than the body, needs 
equally regular ablutions. Parks are put 
into cities for this very sort of sanitative 
service which they are able to render. 

The power of environment upon every 
living species has come to be accepted as 
a fundamental law of life. There are those, 
indeed, who read into this principle the 
whole law, and who assert that it accounts 
for everything. Environment certainly 
does exercise an almost unlimited influence, 
no less upon human life than upon the con- 
stitution of a mollusk or the form of an 
orchid. And in this all but all-powerful 
environment what part does the landscape 
play for us? Is it not, in fact, the principal 
part? For we are environed night and day, 
from birth till death, by the landscape. 

Its power may be judged further from 
its effects. Compare the people of Switzer- 
land with those of Holland. What makes 

20 



ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE 

the differences between them? Is it edu- 
cation? Education has grown out of his- 
tory and literature. What have been back 
o£ these? Away down at the root the 
primary and irresolvable difference is chiefly 
one of landscape and of climate; — and 
climate is one-half landscape and the other 
half the result of landscape. 

We can institute a similar comparison 
on our own soil. Hardly could men be 
more unlike than the cowboys of New 
Mexico and the careful close-fisted sons of 
New England. Yet the cowboys and the 
New Englanders are own brothers. Some 
of them slept together in the same trundle- 
beds, and went to the same schools. 

We can see the effects of landscape in 
our own friends. Mary Winthrop has never 
been the same since she went to live in 
Colorado. The large mountains have 
taught her to regard the great qualities in 
life; but they have made her neglectful of 
her manicure set. Paul and Harvey Hud- 
son were as much alike as two brothers 
usually are when they used to go to school 
in Schoharie County, New York; but they 
are decidedly different now. Paul has lived 
twenty years in Concord, New Hampshire, 

21 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

where he has his garden and all his polite 
and well-ordered pleasures. Harvey has 
been twenty-two years in Iowa in the real 
estate business. There is no need to make 
an inventory of their present differences. 
Any one can do that without ever seeing 
the two men. Harvey's character is like 
the broad open plains; Paul's is like the 
rich and beautiful, but immovable granite 
hills. 

In our own characters, if we will look 
into them, we may trace yet more plainly 
the effects of landscape. I know very 
well what those twenty-five years on the 
Kansas plains have meant to me, and also 
the years in the mountains. 

It is hardly necessary to recall how 
often the landscape has been the inspiration 
for the best artists, — especially poets and 
painters. This ought to be noticed, too, 
that the best poetry began with love of 
nature and after men left off flirting with 
impossible goddesses; and also that paint- 
ing was stiff and formal till the landscape 
began to dominate it. So that in all strict- 
ness one may say that in art the dis- 
covery of landscape has made humanity 
more human and divinity more divine. It 

22 



ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE 

I gives the former its proper environment, 
and the latter its material expression. 

In large part the effect of landscape on 
human lives is unnoticed and unknown 
even to the personality affected. The 
greatest and deepest and most ineffaceable 
results are probably of this sort. Yet it is 
no rare thing to find an attachment to 
landscape, both conscious and powerful, 
thus acknowledging its influence. My 
friend Mr. Kinney has a fruit-storage house 
on the top of which he has built a cupola 
for the special purpose of viewing the 
country round. It is hardly possible for a 
visitor to leave the farm without first fol- 
lowing Mr. Kinney up the steep and narrow 
stairs to have a look at the lake and the 
mountains. There is nothing about the 
homestead, not even the magnificent apple 
orchard, that the owner is prouder of or 
enjoys more. 

The doctors have discovered a new 
name for an old disease — the name is 
nostalgia, which, translated into English, 
means, "We want to see our home again." 
There were dark and terrible days of 
homesickness for the men and women who 
went from New England to settle the great 

23 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

plains. Many a woman of gentle nurture 
really died in the trial. And the great 
longing was not to see the old schoolmates, 
nor even, — in most cases, — to see parents 
or brothers and sisters, but to look once 
more on the peaceful green hills, on the 
dark pine forests and the quiet clustering 
houses of the village in the valley. 



24 




2 « 

o 



ESSAY NUMBER TWO 

On the Ministry of Trees 



The pleasing tranquillity of groves hath ever 
been in high repute among the innocent and refined 
part of mankind. Indeed, no species of land- 
scape is so fitted for meditation. The forest at- 
tracts the attention h^ its grandeur; and the park 
scener}) h^ its beauty; . . . but the uniform 
sameness of the grove leaves the eye disengaged; 
and the feet wandering at pleasure where they are 
confined by no path, want little direction. The 
mind, therefore, undisturbed, has only to retire 
within itself. Hence the philosopher, the devotee, 
the poet, all retreated to these quiet recesses; and 

from the world retired, conversed with 
angels and immortal forms. 

In classic times the grove was the haunt of 
gods : 

Habitarunt dii quoque sylvas. 

And in the days of Nature, before art had in- 
troduced a kind of combination against her, man 
had no idea of worshipping God in a temple 
made with hands. 

Gilpin, 
"Forest Scenery" 



27 



The groves rvere Cod's first temples. Ere man 

learned 
To hew the shaft, and la^ the architrave. 
And spread the roof above them — ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll hack 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood. 
Amid the cool and silence, he ^ne/< down. 
And ofered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. 

William Cullen Bryant, 

"A Forest Hymn" 



Pour vous, mon ami, pour tout le monde, ce 
grand tilleul est une tente magnifique, d'un vert 
transparent; vous p vo'^ez sautiller des oiseaux, volt- 
iger quelques faunes ou quelques sylvains, papillons 
qui aiment V ombre et le silence; vous respirez 
la douce odeur de ses fleurs. Mais pour moi, il me 
semble que le vent qui agite ces feuilles me redise 
ioutes ces choses que fai dites et entendues au 
pied d*un autre tilleul, a une epoque deja bien 
eloignee; V ombre des feuilles de Varbre et les ray- 
ons de soleil quelles tamisent forment pour moi 
des images que je ne revois que la; cette odeur 
m'enivre, et trouble ma raison, et me plonge dans 
des extases et dans des reves. 

Alphonse Karr, 
*'Voyage autour ^c mon Jardin" 



29 



ON THE MINISTRY OF TREES 

yi^HARLES DUDLEY WARNER said 
^^ that until he saw the Annapolis at 

low tide, he never realized how much 
it added to the looks of a river to have 
water in it. One might say the same thing 
of trees in the landscape. There are, indeed, 
some landscapes without trees; but they 
are exceptional, desolate, or vain. 

It will not do to go too far with this 
rule. I love the prairies. There is inspira- 
tion in the view where one can see for 
twenty miles in every direction without tree 
or shrub to arrest the eye. I remember 
when the buffaloes were there, and an occa- 
sional coyote, and the white-topped prairie 
schooners crawling along the trail. A tree 
would be a false note in that picture. Two 
trees would ruin it. 

Nevertheless, let God be praised for 
trees. Even the plains would lose some of 
their charm if one could not compare them 
with the mountains and the forests. 
Western Kansas is beautiful partly by con- 

31 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

trast with Colorado and Vermont. It 
would be terrible to be without trees alto- 
gether. If there should ever be a dull, 
monotonous world, where all landscapes 
must be alike, let it be a world full of trees. 

A recent magazine story tells of a 
seven-year-old Arizona girl who stood 
dancing under a scrubby little cottonwood 
tree and clapping her hands to the rustling 
leaves. The stranger said to her mother, 
*'Your little girl seems to be much de- 
lighted by the tree." 

"Ah, yes, she may well be so," said the 
mother. "It is the first tree she ever saw." 

One might live without art galleries, 
without theaters, possibly without libraries; 
but to live to be even seven years old with- 
out trees seems like the culmination of all 
hardships. 

Trees are peculiarly adapted to the 
landscape. They are suited to it like sails 
to a boat. They are the most indispensable 
of materials for landscape-making. Even 
the landscape architects, in their puny, little 
works, use thousands of them. Amongst 
these craftsmen, trees are bought and sold 
by millions, and they all go to landscape- 
making. 

32 




EDGE OF THE WOODS 

Wm. T. Knox 




PINE TREES 

H. F. Perkins 



THE MINISTRY OF TREES 

The characteristic note is given to 
many of the greatest natural landscapes by 
trees, usually by some particular species. 
The pine forests of northern Wisconsin, 
the larches of eastern Quebec, the palm 
groves of Florida all play this role. In 
eastern Oklahoma, and through the Ozark 
Mountains, the whiteoaks and jackoaks, 
scattered sparsely over the hillside, clothe 
the landscape with a weird and unforgeta- 
ble character. What would the White 
Mountains be without pines or spruce? 
Just what Niagara Falls would be without 
water. 

It is interesting to take a glance at the 
literature of trees. On my shelves are 
perhaps fifty books devoted to them. 
About one-third are scientific or technical 
works, dealing with botany, arboriculture, 
or forestry. The remainder were intended 
to be poetical. A few of this number really 
have poetry in them; but the significant 
thing is that so much of the literature of 
trees should be given to their aesthetic and 
spiritual appreciation, rather than to the 
mere technical knowledge of them. 

It may be well to remember in this 
connection, what Professor Bailey has 

33 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

pointed out, that there are two quite dif- 
ferent interpretations of Nature, namely, 
the scientific and the poetical. The two 
should not be confused. A book on science 
should not be mixed with poetry; and a 
book of sentiment should not pretend to be 
scientific. But both interpretations are 
legitimate. 

The beauty of the trees has appealed to 
artists of all kinds, though more especially 
to landscape gardeners, painters, and poets. 
We can quickly see how inevitable this is in 
the case of the landscape gardener. He 
works with trees. They are the best of all 
his picture-making materials. The painters 
have painted trees ever since they have 
painted landscape at all, but especially 
since the days of Corot. The poets have 
written of trees from the day they discov- 
ered the natural world, — that is, we may 
say, from Chaucer down, but particularly 
from the time of Wordsworth. One of 
them said, 

I remember, I remember, the fir-trees dark and 

high; 
I used to think their slender tops would almost 

reach the sky. 

And another, when the yearning for 

34 



THE MINISTRY OF TREES 

the old home was strongest in him, remem- 
bered first the trees. He said, 

Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliihen? 

Though the nature lovers' cult had no 
place amongst the old Hebrews, their poets 
and prophets could find no better images 
than the trees with which to dress their 
most vivid revelations of things eternal and 
divine. The sinless Paradise was a garden 
full of trees; and in its center the knowl- 
edge of good and evil grew upon the tree 
of life. The psalmist said that the 
righteous shall flourish "like the palm-tree.'* 
The cedars on Mount Lebanon will be re- 
membered by thousands of generations yet 
to come. 

A single tree is beautiful in itself. Next 
to the human form the most beautiful unit in 
nature is a tree. The symmetry of the per- 
fect elm or pine or palm satisfies the eye like 
the symmetry of a Greek temple. There is 
something more in the tree, though, than 
in any piece of statuary or architecture. 
There is life. And the symmetry of life 
is always more beautiful than that of any 
dead or inert thing. 

A tree is beautiful, too, for texture and 

35 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

color, as well as for form. It is beautiful 
in expression, in the associations that clus- 
ter around it, or which are gratuitously 
given to it. There is one elm in Cambridge 
which we cannot see without vividly imag- 
ining how the great Washington looked 
as he stood beneath its early shade. When 
I find a very old tree in the forest, my mind 
blossoms full of pictures such as this tree 
might have seen,— of wigwams and camp 
fires, and a whole race of men and women 
now gone forever. 

Even the imperfect tree is beautiful; or, 
as Gilpin or Downing would have said, it 
is picturesque. For this is the figure which 
these men used to illustrate the difference 
between the beautiful and the picturesque. 
A tree which reaches full, perfect, and 
normal development is beautiful; one which 
bears upon it the scars of severe struggle, 
broken by storms and living against partial 
defeat, is picturesque. A certain school of 
landscape gardeners used to plant dead and 
blasted trees in private parks just to give 
this note of picturesqueness. 

A tree seems more human than most 
objects in the world. We more readily 
ascribe human qualities to it. The oak-tree 

36 



THE MINISTRY OF TREES 

stands for strength, and the delicate white 
birch for feminine fragility. The quaking 
aspen reminds us of the instability of cer- 
tain men and women, and the somber pine 
of the cold serenity of others. 

The poet or painter may go further, — 
nay, is even certain to go further, — and is 
sure to find in trees something quite beyond 
the suggestion of human character, — some 
symbolism of the divine mysteries. Ruskin, 
who speaks often of trees, nearly always rises 
to this plane, as when he says in the Ele- 
ments of Drawing, "As you draw trees 
more and more in their various states of 
health and hardship, you will be every day 
struck by the beauty of the types they 
present of the truths most essential for 
mankind to know, and you will see that 
this vegetation of the earth, which is neces- 
sary to our life, first, as purifying the air 
for us and then as food, and just as neces- 
sary to our joy in all places of the earth, — 
what these trees and leaves, I say, are 
meant to teach us as we contemplate them, 
and read or hear their lovely language, 
written or spoken for us, not in frightful, 
black letters, nor in dull sentences, but in 
fair, green, and shadowy shapes of waving 

37 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

woods, and blossomed brightness of odor- 
iferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintru- 
sive wisdom, and playful morality." 

We infer the character of God chiefly 
from our experience of human nature ; but 
of all those things in external nature which 
speak to us of divine love and care, the 
trees seem to be the preeminent ministers, 
— the symbols and the substance of wor- 
ship. The Druids used to worship the oak- 
trees, it is said. They must have been a 
kindly, amiable folk. The Hebrew preach- 
ers used to object to their people going to 
the groves for worship, but their objection 
seems to have been factitious and purely 
technical. "The groves were God's first 
temples," and it is hard to believe that there 
could ever be any idolatry there. 



38 



ESSAY NUMBER THREE 

On Some Other Elements of 
Landscape 



Look-' under that broad beech-tree I sat down 
when I was last this wa}) a- fishing; and the birds in 
the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly) 
contention with an echoy whose dead voice seemed 
to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that 
primrose hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams 
glide silently toward their center, the tempestuous 
sea; \)et sometimes opposed b\f rugged roots 
and pebblestones, which broke their waves, and 
turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled 
the time by viewing the harmless lambs; some 
leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others 
sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw 
others craving comfort from the swollen udders of 
their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and 
other sights had so fully possest my soul with con- 
tent, that I thought, as the poet has happily 
exprest it, 

I was for that time lifted above earth; 

And possest of joys not promised in my birth. 

IzAAK Walton 

Behold! the Sea, 
The opaline, the plentiful and strong. 
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, 
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July; 
Sea full of food, the nourisher of k^nds, 
Purger of earth, and medicine of men; 
Creating a sweet climate by my breath. 
Washing out harms and griefs from memory. 
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow. 
Giving a hint of that which changes not. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Seashore" 
41 



ON SOME OTHER ELEMENTS OF 
LANDSCAPE 

^^ HOSE who think of the landscape as 
^^ being diffuse and lacking composi- 
tion frequently reach their inadequate 
conclusions from giving too much heed to 
details. To the child the finest painting 
may contain nothing but a house, a water- 
fall and a mountain, while the composition 
— ^the relation of part to part — ^the chief 
reason of being for the picture — is entirely 
lost in his curious interest in details. In 
the larger musical pieces, like the oratorios, 
it is extremely hard for the unprofessional 
listener to find anything more than a suc- 
cession of disconnected airs and recitations. 
Some passages may be pleasing, some 
rather flat, many quite unintelligible; but 
the oratorio as a whole does not stand forth 
with any form and individuality. So the 
details of landscape have their own values; 
certain items please us; a few offend. 

There are, of course, very few details 
of landscape which are offensive, — in nat- 

43 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

ural scenery probably none. I have seen 
the alkali plains and the bad lands; but 
these latter are full of interest, while the 
former are truly beautiful. Every river is 
beautiful, big or little. As Mr. Ward said 
of girls: "I like big girls: — and little ones." 
Every mountain is worth knowing and 
every little hill. Every valley in the world 
is a panorama of beauty; every plain is a 
picture; even the desert is an inspiring sight 
in spite of the physical discomforts which 
it may yield. 

In another essay we have talked of 
trees. They are the most conspicuous liv- 
ing elements in the landscape and most 
closely touch our humanity. But the 
throbbing ocean, the quiet lake, the gossip- 
ing brook also appeal to our human moods. 
Each has been personified a thousand times 
in literature. Each one, indeed, has spoken 
to my life and to my neighbor's, and waste, 
indeed, is that soul where no response has 
been heard. Who could stand on the deck 
of the boat in mid-ocean, with a thousand 
miles of unmarked water on every side 
inviting the eye to invisible horizons be- 
yond, and not feel the infinite stretch of his 
own life? Or who, standing by the peace- 

44 



ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE 

ful lake at sunset, could help yearning for 
an equal peace in his own heart or believ- 
ing that his soul was truly capable of it? 
Or who can listen closely to the cheerful 
songful music of the mountain brook — the 
brook which "goes on forever" — without 
longing for the hours when his own human 
life might run a similarly care-free course? 
In fact, this is the great glory of the phys- 
ical world, that it is inter pretable into the 
noblest passions and aspirations of the 
human heart. 

Every nature lover has his specialty. 
One man's muse rides on "The Seven Seas," 
another man fishes quietly along "Little 
Rivers"; another finds his pastime hunting 
big game in the Rockies. Stevenson's love 
for the tropical ocean was almost pathetic. 

The mountains have always drawn 
men. Even the savages resorted to them. 
Now in the days of a superheated civiliza- 
tion men and women go back to the moun- 
tains with a peculiar confidence. The 
mountains of Colorado annually call to- 
gether thousands of tourists; but better 
than the tourists are the thousands of old 
friends recalled as to a parental home by 
the mountains of Manitou or Middle Park. 

45 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

The White Mountains are visited every 
summer by hordes of idle pleasure-seekers, 
some with new clothes to show, and some 
with budding daughters ; but there are many 
many more who return to the White Moun- 
tains in summer for a real recreation of 
body and of spirit, for the renewal of senses 
worn threadbare and the uplift of souls 
depressed with the sins of city life. Such 
people find a heart's refuge in the hills, as 
did the poet who remembered them in a 
beautiful figure, saying 

As the mountains are roundabout Jerusalem, 
So the Lord is roundabout them that fear Him. 

The mountains appeal also to the lust 
of adventure. Every year a toll of lives is 
taken by Mt. Blanc and the Matterhorn. 
The hardiest American explorers are now 
attacking Mt. McKinley. The noble peaks 
of the Himalayas are yet unspoken. Even 
the small mountains excite some appetite 
for conquest in the mildest breasts. Re- 
member how Thoreau set out for Wachu- 
sett. Here in our own neighborhood is 
the Appalachian Club (and many smaller 
mountain clubs), composed of lawyers, 
teachers and parsons bound together as by 

46 



ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE 

a pirates' oath to scale some thousand-foot 
altitudes. 

The sense of beauty finds nourishment 
everywhere in mountain views. I have seen 
the Presidential Range from the west when 
the afternoon sun was thrown back from 
the first soft snow caps; and if there are 
any lovelier sights in Heaven it will surely 
be worth a few thousand years to revel in 
the glory of them. I have seen the Jung- 
frau from Rugen Park at Interlaken when 
the bridal veil of mist lifted for a moment 
from her front revealing one of the most 
sublime pictures of the mortal world. I 
have looked for hours in quiet joy upon the 
tiny Holyoke range; I have climbed Mt. 
Orford in the rain; I have loved Mt. Marcy 
from afar; I have viewed Pike's Peak from 
many angles; I have walked the dome of 
Mt. Helena by daylight and by night ; and 
every contact with every one has been a 
feast of beauty to me. The one I knew 
best of all was Mt. Mansfield. 

A strong and rugged profile juts against the east- 
ern sky, 

Where human face some Ukeness finds in mountain 
imag'ry,— 

A "nose" and "chin" are certified to each Ver- 
monter's eye. 

47 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

The morning's purpling shadows spread along the 

mountain base, 
While nearer mists are lifting from Winooski's 

silvery trace, 
And spectrum clouds their hues reflect upon the 

upturned face. 

Or evening lights, with gentle touch on wood and 

field and farm, 
Reveal the landscape fair and dear with every 

homely charm, 
Where good men live and love and die free from 

the world's alarm. 

O Mansfield, firm and steadfast friend! Thy 

patience still be mine! 
When cares afHict I'd pattern thee, my life to God 

resign, 
With equal peace, with faith as firm, my face 

upturned like thine! 

In passing it may be worth remark that 
the beauty of the mountain is more elusive 
even than the beauty of the sea. The great 
painters have caught the spirit and even 
the movement of the ocean with some suc- 
cess; but Orizaba and Rainier have not yet 
been put on canvas. 

As the mountains, so the rivers. Their 
appeal lies to the appetite for adventure, 
to the sense of beauty and to a deeper 
spiritual sense through which we seem to 
be next of kin to the physical world. As 

48 




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ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE 

one stands on the levee at New Orleans 
and sees the flood of waters coming down 
from the lap of the continent, he must have 
a wooden imagination, indeed, if he does not 
wish to penetrate the country in a dozen 
states more than a thousand miles away 
whence these waters come. The early 
voyageurs who explored the valley of the 
St. Lawrence were carried forward by this 
irresistible appetite quite as much as by any 
holy desire for the conversion of the 
Indians. Why, even the little brook drives 
me half insane with its coquetry as it 
vanishes round the next turn. I long to 
follow it; and if by good fortune it should 
be apple-blossom time and I have my hat- 
band stuck full of trout flies, then I will 
indeed stifle every other call and follow on 
from pool to pool as long as I can see the 
flash of a leaping trout. 

Every river and every brook is beauti- 
ful, and each in its own individual way. 
Some critics disparage the muddy Missouri, 
but they show a provincial and undeveloped 
taste in doing so. Some travelers say the 
Rhine is a disappointment. May Heaven 
forgive their hardness of heart! Some peo- 
ple find little joy in the Hudson; but then, 

49 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

indeed, there are those who do not care for 
Handel's Largo nor for Hamlet. 

Let Lucy Larcom speak for the Merri- 
mack: 

Dear river, that didst wander through 
My childhood's path, a vein of blue. 
Freshening the pulses of my youth 
Toward glimpsing hope and opening truth, 
A heart thank-laden hastens back 
To rest by thee, bright Merrimack! 

I once knew a brook, — a creek the 
neighbors called it. It was muddy, its 
banks were somewhat squalid, and the trees 
along its borders would not take any prizes 
at an international competition; but there 
was a practicable swimming-hole, and I 
once caught three catfish just above the 
bend, and my sweetheart used to walk with 
me through the trees there. Oh, poor and 
homely creek, with what glorious visions of 
true and worthy beauty did you fill my ex- 
panding boyhood! 

There could not be an unlovely lake, I 
suppose, just as no woman could ever be 
unlovely except for her own sins. A lake 
can not be sinful, of course. Superior has 
a beauty wild and vast like that of the 
ocean ; Champlain is glorious with a queenly 

50 



ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE 

majesty; Killarney and Lomond are famous 
in song and story; and we can never forget 
how far-away Galilee used to yield rest and 
inspiration to the homeless Man of Sor- 
rows. The marshes of Glynn inspired 
Lanier of fragrant memory, and Walden 
Pond through Thoreau was the means of 
enriching our literature forever. 

The plains seem dreary to some eyes; 
but I must think that such eyes look out of 
darkened souls wherein the sense of beauty 
lies dead or unawakened. Twenty-five 
years of my boyhood were spent upon the 
plains. Even in those days of immaturity 
they seemed beautiful to me; and I will 
always remember with what poignant joy 
that beauty all swept back over my soul, 
when, after some years of wandering, I 
suddenly found myself once more in the 
center of the world, with the flat unbroken 
land stretching out everywhere to kiss the 
shimmering horizon. When the plains used 
to be lighted up at night with miles on 
miles of prairie fires, that was almost the 
sublimest sight of a lifetime. I never saw 
the Sahara, but I should like to. That, too, 
must be magnificent, in sun or in storm. 

And so whether it be the great moun- 

51 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

tain peak or the little hill, the mighty river 
or the trickling brook, the boundless ocean 
or the reedy pond, every jot and item of the 
landscape has its message of beauty, of 
adventure and of the heart's uplift. In a 
large sense, yet in a near and real truth, 
they seem to be the voice of God speaking 
to mankind. And as I believe in humanity, 
I must think that the message finds a true 
response in the souls of most men. 



52 



ESSAY NUsBER FOUR 

On Looking at the Sky 



// is strange hojv little in general people ^noip 
about the s^i;. It is the part of creation in Tvhich 
Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing 
man, more for the sole and evident purpose of 
talking to him and teaching him, than in an^ other 
of her Tporks, and it is just the part in which Tve 
least attend to her. . . . There is not a 
moment of any day of our lives when Nature is 
not producing scene after scene, picture after pic- 
ture, glory after glory, and working still upon 
such exquisite and constant principles of the most 
perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done 
for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. 
And every man, wherever placed, however far 
from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this 
done for him constantly. . . . The sky is 
for all. 

RUSKIN, 
"Modern Painters" 



We nestle in Nature, and draw our living as 
parasites from her roots and grains, and we re- 
ceive glances from the heavenly bodies, which 
call us to solitude and foretell the remotest future. 
The blue zenith is the point in which romance and 
reality meet. I think if We should be rapt away 
into all that and dream of heaven, and should 
converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky 
would be all that would remain of our furniture. 

Emerson, 

"Nature" 

55 



ON LOOKING AT THE SKY 

^^HIS has been a lovely day. 
^^ I ask no excuse for the school- 

girlish adjective. It fits. Even a 
schoolgirl may state a scientific truth if 
the fact happens to suit her word. 

It has been a lovely day, and I have 
had the opportunity to enjoy it with more 
than usual freedom. I have run away to a 
lonely hill to gain a little solitude and to 
detach myself from too much work. Before 
me spreads a panorama of New England's 
fairest scenery, — sloping green pastures, 
interspersed with regal centenarian trees, 
and, almost hidden in the distance, a quiet, 
homely village. 

A more engaging and soul-satisfying 
landscape it would be hard to find. But 
to-day my eyes wandered continually to the 
sky, for my soul sought a larger freedom 
and a deeper rest than could be expressed 
even in these miles of peaceful Massachu- 

57 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

setts hills. The sky is often the best part 
of the landscape. 

Every little while I have a quarrel with 
some too honest friend about my definition 
of the landscape. In an exhibition of 
pictures I hung some beautiful marine 
views (not of my own making). "Why, 
look here," said my matter-of-fact friend, 
"these are not landscapes ! There is no land 
in them. They are all water!" 

Another friend of mine contributed to 
a show of landscape photographs, and when 
it was over said that his own prints 
were the only landscape pictures shown: 
the others were only sketches. 

I recognize no such limited definition. 
For me the landscape is anything and every- 
thing visible in the world of out-of-doors. 
Visible, I say; yet there are times when one 
can smell the landscape, as at haying time, 
or the wheat harvest, or the spring plowing. 
There are times when one can hear the 
landscape, — in the pine woods; on the sand 
beach where the breakers fall. Yes, and 
times when the sense of feeling tells its 
subtle, sensuous story, — as when the warm 
August wind sweeps across the Kansas 
prairies, or the sea breeze salts one's face, 

58 



ON LOOKING AT THE SKY 

or the bracing stillness of a Quebec winter 
morning sends one's blood tingling to the 
surface. 

With a woman's logic I defy all critics, 
judges and lexicographers. If the sea and 
the wind and the sky are not landscape, 
what are they? Joshua Bender had a large 
bowl in which he kept soft soap. When he 
put it on the inventory for the auctioneer 
at the vendue he entered it as "i sope bole." 
And when his daughter called him to task 
for bad spelling he said, "Ef that don't spell 
soap bowl what does it spell?" But my case 
is a better one than Joshua Bender's. 

The sky is a necessary part of every 
complete landscape. The painter paints it 
with infinite pains, and the photographers 
insist upon it. One waggish critic of 
amateur snap-shots long ago called those 
skyless pictures baldheaded landscapes, 
and his word has stuck. So common, so 
varied, and so necessary are these sky 
pictures that every practical photographer 
keeps a selection of them in stock, and uses 
them in making up his landscape views. 
A representation of scenery without a sky 
is like a girl without a smile, or like a mug 
of beer after the foam has died. 

59 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

To-day I looked up into the arched 
heavens and saw them filled with beauties 
and delights. How delicate, how varied, 
how splendid are the clouds! One might 
make a lifetime study of them. Yet it is 
hardly worth while, and certainly not nec- 
essary. One need not describe them or 
name them. The only absolutely essential 
thing is to enjoy them. I do not care 
whether they are seven miles high or 
seven and a half, or whether they are made 
of ice crystals or peppermint lozenges. I 
can see for myself that they are supremely 
beautiful. 

When I was a very small lad and used 
to watch the clouds with other children, 
we used to be forever trying to make out 
of them pictures of men, animals or ships. 
We wished to make every cloud represent 
some earthly and familiar thing. As I 
remember myself, I think we expected to 
find such pictures in the heavens, and that 
this expectation was founded on some sort 
of philosophy. Our psychology seemed to 
demand some practical correspondence 
between the clouds in the sky and the beasts 
on the earth. 

But to-day, as I lay on my back and 

60 



ON LOOKING AT THE SKY 



looked up into the blue depths, I saw no 
camel, no dog, no kangaroo. The high 
wind-blown cirrus was spread against the 
azure heavens in strands of unspeakable 
grace, yet in a form of power, and with a 
feeling of virility. It would be a close com- 
parison to say that these clouds suggest 
the sweeping lines in the best paintings of 
Sargent, or Whistler, or Dewing. So 
to-day, instead of seeing fanciful animals 
and birds among the clouds, I could rather 
imagine that I saw the souls of great artists 
blown against the sky. That graceful, 
awkward, powerful trailing shape, spread- 
ing upward for ten miles opposite the sun, 
pure, spotless and serene, might be the soul 
of Lincoln; and the one sporting and 
laughing in the sunshine might be Robert 
Louis Stevenson. 

It is not alone when the sky is warm 
and full of sunshiny clouds that it is 
beautiful and greatly to be loved. I have 
laid on my back, too, when it rained, look- 
ing up to see where the drops come from. 
Indeed, one can see. One catches sight of 
them a great way off, and it is jolly fun to 
see them hurrying down to find me. They 
come from far up in the sky, and yet from a 

61 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

place very near, — a great space filled with 
love and tenderness and blessing, whence 
every sort of gracious ministry falls on a 
thirsty and sometimes unsatisfied world. 

The sky is equally beautiful in a snow- 
fall, and especially so at the beginning of 
a warm snow, when the air is filled with 
soft feathery floating craft, each one loaded 
with pearls and rainbows. The German 
women tell their children that the old 
woman is picking her geese. A more poetic 
little girl said that the angels were throw- 
ing kisses to the children. Lowell, when 
he looked out on "The First Snow-Fail," 
knew that God was sending the snowflakes 
to heal the wounds of the earth, both phys- 
ical and spiritual. It is worth a man's time 
to look up into the sky and see where the 
snowflakes come from. 

All this is the sky of the day season. 
But the night cometh, and with it new 
beauties and beatitudes. There is more 
of brooding tenderness and the spirit of 
motherhood in the night sky. The stars 
are serene and still, yet they sing together 
like the choirs of the judgment day. How 
many they are ! How far away they are ! Yet 
the Infinite Love reaches to all of them. 

62 



ON LOOKING AT THE SKY 

To see the stars well one must make 
his camp in the desert. There, as he lies 
rolled for the night in his blankets, sur- 
rounded only by distance and desolation, 
he looks up into greater beauties than all 
the museums, galleries and conservatories 
of civilization can offer. But these things 
can be seen in part from any farm, and a 
little even from the street corner. The 
wonder is that any man should prefer ser- 
mons or Sunday papers. 

The sky is capable of tremendous 
shifts and changes. I have seen "the cloud 
battalions wheel and form." Three times 
in my life I have seen the cyclone descend 
upon the earth and sweep everything in its 
path. Oh, the awful majesty of that sight! 
The simple memory of it makes a man's 
heart stand still. What has the drama or 
literature or painting, or any art to put 
beside that picture? 

Every mood and every temper has its 
representative in the clouds and the sky. 
There are afternoons when the heavens 
frown like Oliver Cromwell, days when 
they weep like Keats, mornings when they 
are as fair as Esther. 

Above, hangs the blue dome, the de- 

63 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

spair of painters, the joy of pedestrians. 
It is as wide as the world, as high as heaven, 
as infinite as love. Brother, how often do 
you practise to stand by yourself and take 
a long look thither? Does not your life 
need that quiet, that exaltation, that peace? 

The sky and the sea are twin types of 
infinity. As we gaze steadfastly upon 
either, we see plainly how endless are space 
and time, and how small our present vexa- 
tions. We understand how much there is 
still in store for us, — yea, how much is 
already bestowed upon us. Some persons 
testify that in such a vision they see their 
own smallness; but it were better and truer 
to be able to say that here one sees his own 
greatness, feels his divine infinity, and lays 
hold on all space and eternity. 

It is no mere matter of accident that 
the ancient words for the Deity are the 
same as for the sky, such as Deus and 
Dyaus. When those far aboriginal peoples 
caught the first glimmering thought of God 
it was out of the bright, shining sky, — 
the smiling, overarching, protecting sky, — 
and they looked up and prayed and called 
Him Deus, that is, the sky. 

I look up into the sky. I see it filled 

64 



ON LOOKING AT THE SKY 

with delectable beauties and celestial 
promises. Some men have said that Heaven 
lies that way. Perhaps. At any rate, I 
feel sure that if I could realize in my life 
the largeness, the freedom and the purity 
that I see there, that would be Heaven. 



65 



ESSAY NUMBER FIVE 

On the Weather 



The sea and the s^p are always changing. 
What appears at first a monotony) is, in fact, an 
unending diversity). Time was, doubtless, in the 
infanc}) of the earth ivhen the beds of the oceans 
were filled with pestilent gases and vapors, and 
time ma}) be in the earth's old age when the seas 
will be great frozen depths of ice; but to-da^ 
the^ are in their prime, in the heyday of their 
glory), strong in mass and movement, overwhelming 
in extent and power, splendid in color and light. 

J. C Van Dyke. 
"Nature for Its Own Sake" 



All that grows has grace, — 
All are appropriate, — bog and marsh and fen 
Are only) poor to undiscerning men. 



Crabbe 



69 



ON THE WEATHER 

^^ HE landscape is inseparable from the 
^^ weather. Every change in tempera- 
ture, wind or humidity introduces a 
corresponding change in the aspect of 
mountain and lake. To my way of think- 
ing these changes present differences not 
of degree, but of quality only. The land- 
scape always seems to me equally beautiful, 
whether in rain, or mist, or full sun. I 
have studied the woods with a camera in 
all weathers, — have photographed them in 
the noonday shine, in fog, in silvery mist, 
in pouring rain and in a driving January 
blizzard; and while the camera, of course, 
works better in some atmospheres than in 
others, the woods themselves are never 
diminished in beauty by the state of the 
weather. If we begin to talk about different 
degrees of merit we shall be forced to admit, 
of course, that some of the most beautiful 
effects in landscape are developed in what 
ignorant and superstitious people call bad 
weather. The prairies in a snow-squall are 

71 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

magnificent; so is the ocean in a storm. 
Even Broadway is worth seeing in a pour- 
ing rain. 

Speaking of "bad" weather, this oppor- 
tunity cannot pass without a challenge to 
this pet superstition of civilization. It is 
too bad that such a foolish notion should 
have such universal currency. That is a 
wise aphorism of Professor Bailey's that 
the weather cannot be bad, because it is 
not a human institution. Many persons 
will still think, perhaps, that certain sorts 
of weather are disagreeable, the drizzling 
rain in the city, or the driving storm in the 
country; but this is really only because of 
their own negligence in not being prepared 
for it. 

The bugaboo of bad weather is kept alive 
principally on three kinds of diet, — first, a 
stupid enslavement to conventionalities ; sec- 
ond, a thoughtless neglect of proper clothing ; 
and, third, the truly idiotic habit of making 
the weather bear the burden of all small con- 
versation. Some persons dislike the rain 
because it spoils their clothes. It is true 
that one can not comfortably wear trailing 
skirts and silk petticoats on the street on 
rainy days; but the trailing skirts are an 

72 




Q 
O 

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;-^^^«' ill 



.^^< 



•T-^ ^V 



'^-^m. 



f - * 






ON THE WEATHER 



abomination under any circumstances, and 
any one who wears them certainly has no 
license to blame the rain. Yet people who 
care more to be comfortable than to be 
stylish sometimes suffer from inclemencies 
of weather because they do not provide 
themselves with proper clothing. Perhaps 
they try to wear the same underclothing 
the year round, or they go about carelessly 
without overshoes. I saw a man once on 
his first voyage across the Atlantic. He 
went without any overcoat or blanket, 
because it was July. He didn't know any 
better, and he suffered for it, but even he 
could not help saying that we had glorious 
weather on the promenade deck. 

But what shall we say of those people 
who, wishing to make talk and having 
nothing within themselves to draw on, make 
capital of the weather and call it "nawsty"? 
Their crime is worse than ordinary slander, 
because the defamation falls on a great 
and noble object. In fact, it is worse than 
lese-majeste, as the sky is higher than any 
earthly potentate. It is noteworthy, too, 
that the weather critics are chiefly the people 
who stay most indoors and really know the 
least about the weather. 

73 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Every kind of weather is good. I well 
remember a record-breaking blizzard on the 
plains. All day long and into the night I 
was out in it working with a herd of insuf- 
ficiently protected cattle. Some of the 
cattle suffered, but I was happy and I still 
look back on that day with joy. It certainly 
was a glorious spectacle to look at. For 
six weeks one summer I lay abed with a 
raging fever in a southern country where 
the thermometer every day ranged well 
above one hundred degrees, yet I still 
remember with delight the wavering, cool- 
ing breeze that came in at the open window, 
and the magnificence of the thunder 
showers that swept over the sky while I 
lay there. I was not well nor happy those 
days, but I couldn't blame the weather for 
it. I have been on the open ocean when 
the wind blew a gale, and when every third 
roller came sweeping over the upper deck. 
I confess I was miserably sick, but I laid that, 
not to the wind, but to my stomach. When 
I could momentarily command that rebel- 
lious organ, I went on deck and faced the 
storm, and I thought it was the most 
glorious weather I ever saw. I envied 
those old sailors with their waterproof 

74 



ON THE WEATHER 



stomachs, who could stand on the bridge 
and nose it all day long, and I begrudged 
the sea-gulls their easy enjoyment of it. No; 
when we say we are not suited with the 
weather, it is always some little defect of 
our own that is to blame, and usually one 
that could be easily remedied. With Pro- 
fessor Bailey, I hope the time will soon 
come when intelligent people will cease to 
talk about "bad" weather. 

A twin superstition is the one about 
"bad" climates. We are forever hearing 
that this or that district has a bad climate — 
"an unhealthy climate," they call it in the 
vernacular. Science has demonstrated that 
there is no such thing. Where people used 
to charge the ague up to the climate, we now 
know that we are dealing only with mos- 
quitoes. Even the dreaded yellow fever is 
not propagated by an untoward climate, 
but it, too, is spread abroad by insects. 

Any climate is good if you get enough 
of it. Men with weak lungs used to go to 
Colorado and be cured. It was because they 
were obliged to live out-of-doors in Colo- 
rado. The men who have done the most 
to stop the ravages of the white plague have 
done it by making their patients take the 

75 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

weather. On the face of it nothing could 
look more unpromising than to make a frail 
and waning woman sleep in the woods, 
with the temperature at zero, and the snow 
falling on her couch; yet this is precisely 
what she needs. And even in the impure 
air of New York City men and women by 
hundreds are cured of consumption in its 
early stages, simply by working and sleeping 
out-of-doors, and taking the weather as it 
comes. 

If one takes this point of view it will 
be seen that he leaves small praise for those 
migratory men and women of nerves and lei- 
sure, who are always flitting about the coun- 
try in search of a more agreeable climate. 
They spend two months in Florida or 
Southern California, a month at Asheville, 
a fortnight at Old Point, a few days at 
Atlantic City, and are on the move again 
for the Adirondacks and the Thousand 
Islands. In trying to equalize the climate 
they lose the variety and spice of life, and 
gain neither health nor comfort in return. 

Then there are the real estate agents 
who play on this whim, and who advertise 
their particular localities as having such 
remarkably equable climate. They pub- 

76 



ON THE WEATHER 



lish temperature charts showing that the 
thermometer never goes above 70 degrees 
in the summer, nor below 60 degrees in 
the winter. I am surprised that anybody 
cares to live in such a country. I prefer 
a wider variety in my allotment. I like 
to run the whole gamut of weather. In 
our country, where we get three whole 
octaves, chromatic scale, with trills on 
high C, and shakes on low G, — sometimes 
all within the space of a week, — here there 
is some music to life. Here we see the 
world in a myriad moods. Here the land- 
scape panorama moves from scene to scene 
as season follows season, and even as day 
treads upon day. The world is new to us 
every morning, and always fresh and full 
of loveliness. 

This much had to be said toward put- 
ting down silly complainers. It is more 
to our interest, however, to notice how the 
changes of the weather multiply the beau- 
ties of landscape. To-day I saw the river 
covered by a thick mist, between snow and 
rain. Yesterday it was under a gray win- 
try sky, white and solemn, bound in snow 
and ice. To-morrow it may be flooded 
with sunshine and flashing back the light 

77 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

like the flaming sword of the archangel. 
It is always the same physical landscape, — 
the same quiet millpond, the same gurgling 
rapids below, the same tall pines on the 
bank beyond and the same old mill in the 
foreground; — but it is a hundred different 
pictures every month as the weather 
changes. The kaleidoscope turns even 
with the hours of the day, for the pines are 
dark in the morning, while they catch the 
sun in the afternoon, and the millpond, 
which is bright with the midday light, 
gathers heavy shadows from the western 
hills when the sun begins to sink. 

In a photographic club to which I 
belong, prints are habitually submitted 
marked with the dates showing when the 
negatives were made. Occasionally an 
artist makes an error in copying his data, 
and marks December on a picture which 
was really made in November. But such 
mistakes are always quickly detected, for 
the difference in the landscape is so great, 
even between neighboring months, that any 
ordinary photograph will show it. And a 
picture might as well be untrue to the 
clouds or the foreground as to distort the 
calendar or be untrue to the weather. 

78 



ON THE WEATHER 



The practical landscape gardener has 
to have due regard everywhere to the 
climate and to its habitual traits of weather. 
He will not make a sun parlor in Arizona, 
nor will he insist on shady pergolas in 
Quebec. But even beyond the creature 
comfort of his clients he should design his 
landscape pictures with an eye quick to the 
effects which they are to yield in the round 
of local meteorologies. An Italian garden, 
with its terraces, balustrades and statuary, 
would look sick and lonesome in Kansas 
during a March wind. The clustering 
groves of cottonwood and box-elder which 
look so cheerful and homelike under the 
glistening sun of Greeley, Colorado, would 
look tame and flat in the soft, diffused, 
many-colored light of Kent or Sussex. 
The fine and dignified terraces which adorn 
the banks of the Rhine at Cologne would 
look dreary, or even tawdry, on the banks 
of the Mississippi at St. Louis. 

Yes, the landscape and the weather 
are absolutely interdependent parts of one 
picture, wherefore they must be adjusted to 
one another with the utmost nicety ; and the 
man who would enjoy the one must know 
and love the other. 

79 



ESSAY NUMBER StX 



On the Art Which Mends 
Nature 



A novel country; I might make it mine 
B^ choosing which one aspect of the year 
Suited mood best^ and putting solely that 
On panel someTvhere in the House of Fame, 
Landscaping what I saved, not what I saw; 
Might fix you, whether frost in goblin-time 
Startled the moon with his abrupt bright laugh. 
Or, Augustus hair afloat in filmy fire. 
She fell, arms wide, face foremost on the world. 
Swooned there and so singed out the strength of 

things. 
Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both. 
The land dwarfed to one likeness of the land. 
Life cramped corpse-fashion. Rather learn and love 
Each facet' flash of the revolving year! 

Robert Browning, 
"The Ring and the Book" 



83 



ON THE ART WHICH MENDS 
NATURE 



'This is an art 

Which does mend nature, 

change it rather, but 
The art itself is nature." 



fN all the old-time debating clubs there 
were three live issues: the relative 
destructiveness of fire and water, the 
joy of pursuit versus the satisfaction of 
possession, and the comparative beauty 
of the works of art and the works of 
nature. Well do I remember how, when 
our school district was matched against 
No. 23, adjoining us on the south, 
I heroically defended the beauties of art 
against the teacher of the opposing school, 
who sought to show that only nature was 
fit to be admired! Oh, those were Homeric 
days, and the question fitted the times. 
What think you, my cultured reader, in 
this year of grace, are the works of art more 
to be loved than those of nature? 

85 



Till, i.andsiaim: lu.Aurii ul 

W<Milt1 It not Hepin ii>inf(»i t<il)lt* to oom- 
pnuMiMc rti> y^icM (\ coiUu>vruiy i' I'hcic in 
rt pUuc where Huch « cuiupromise can 
honoittbly be n\mle. It i» in the ht-Kl of 
laiubiia|>e ^a^(lenin^^. Here ait aiul nature 
<i>Mihuir jio prilndy that none* may Uixy, U> 
thin is ail. t»i ncc here nature. "The art 
itnell \h natnir " 

huleed, the ait ol Unulritapr i-^ndenni^ 
tH HO near to nature that ht»nie hiive denied 
It (he ii^ht to he called an art at all. A 
icitani i\unlcin univrisily te\t l>ot>U ol 
.souinl unahticM anil lugh lepntation pie- 
teiulH to clasHily all the line artH and to 
estin\ate the sci>pe and power ol each. The 
siucesMive chapters discuss painting, sculp 
tnic, portly, etc.. down to dancing, whu h 
Ih ably detendctl ioi a place in the list; hut 
the ait ol landsiapc ^.'.ai dnun^'. is nnpUiced 
and tor^;t>tten. This is icitamly sui pi ising. 
hut it illustrates the vul^;ar neglect o{ this 
Huhject. Laiulscape ganlenin^ is the nioat 
recent t»l the arts, and the least un<ler 
sti»od. It IS haully known as a ilehnite 
separate thin^i. even amon^ its practi- 
tiiMiers; so that a deep ami widespieatl 
if^norance of its aims aiul methi>ils may 
he excuseil in the laity- 



ART WHICH MINIiJi NAJUKK 



This chaotit:, formal ivt:, iniiialory 
state of aiiiiUti < ouM lididly he heiiei ijlim- 
liatcd iliiiii ill liic fuel llidl llie ineji ntobi 
deeply engaged in the art have not decided 
wiidl lo t d\\ i\. Some ( dlJ it IdJidbt d|>e 
gaideniiig, bome call it laudbcape at* liit^ct- 
ure, and bome weakly evade the itibue hy 
taliiing of landscape art. Now, it is not 
worth rjiiarreling r>ver these names, for 
iiot one oi lljeoj lb <|uite sat jblax tot y. J lis* 
toricflUy, the term landscape gardening 
outjht to be preferred, — hut, tlieoreti* ally 
at leabt, the art ib more < lobejy allied tr> 
architecture tjjan to gardening. One can.- 
not avoid the rather mean suspicion, liow- 
evei, that the pictjrjjl fashion among the 
profebbional hicthicij to call themselves 
landscape architects is promoted hy two 
accidental causes, hrst, the feeling that 
architecture sounds tiig^er than gardening 
and can cr^mmand a hettef lee; and, be< o/jd, 
the fact that the architectural btyle of 
landscape work is the present vogue an)/>/)g 
wealthy clientb. ilowever, we will let that 
matter rest niow. It is cited Ijere only Ui 
illustrate the unsettled state of our ideas. 

I^ands^ape gardening/ is a fine art for 
the same reason thiii p.nnU/ig oi nmtzu is; 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

namely, because it leads to something beau- 
tiful. To be more specific, we might say 
that it is a fine art because it produces 
organized beauty. Simple objects of beauty, 
like a rose or a blue tile, are born or made 
in various ways — not necessarily in the 
ways of art; — but their combinations into 
organic schemes wherein each member 
serves a particular office, and wherein all 
the members of any one scheme constitute 
a whole organism, every part duly and 
organically related to every other part — 
that is art. And when these various ele- 
ments happen to be trees, flowers, lawns, 
and pergolas, the art which organizes them 
is landscape gardening. 

Now, this art is fairly entitled to take 
high place in the general company of fine 
arts for several reasons ; first of all, for the 
very great difficulties which have to be 
overcome. The genius of art is in the 
overcoming of difficulties. 

The first great difficulty that the land- 
scape gardener meets lies in the fact that 
his composition is seen from no fixed point 
of view. This seems so great an obstacle 
that Professor Santayana thought it could 
never be overcome, and this led him to 

88 




ROYAL PALM AVENUE 

J. Horace McFarland 




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ART WHICH MENDS NATURE 

speak of the landscape as having no compo- 
sition. But Olmsted and Vaux made 
compositions which were satisfying from 
all points of view. Instead of painting a 
landscape on canvas to be enjoyed from 
a point twenty feet exactly in front of the 
frame, the real landscape, — composed by a 
proper artist, is enjoyed from every side, 
and from every distance. The landscape 
gardener never undertakes anything sim- 
pler than a cyclorama. 

Another great test has to be met in 
the changes brought by passing years. The 
sculptor's marble rests in proverbial de- 
fiance of time, but in the gardener's picture 
the elements are always fluent. The trees 
grow, the flowers die away, and even the 
paths and water-courses change. As a 
rule, the gardener must wait a number of 
years for Nature to complete the picture 
which his imagination has planned. Mean- 
while he presents a series of tentative 
sketches, changing them every year, every 
one beautiful and possibly perfect in itself 
up to the top of the scale. Then for a 
day the picture is finished. From that 
point the garden may go slowly down in 
picturesque decay, and even this may be 

89 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

foreseen and turned to account by the 
artist in landscape. 

Still more radical and embarrassing are 
the changes wrought by the succeeding 
seasons of the year. The garden is one 
thing in January, and quite a different 
thing in May, and still another thing in 
October. The gardener is not dismissed 
when he composes one picture from one 
point of view, nor yet when he has com- 
posed a thousand in one for a thousand 
points of view, nor yet when he has pro- 
jected ten thousand pictures for ten 
successive years: he must make it twelve 
times ten thousand, so that every month in 
the year may have its peculiar beauty. 

It seems like carrying this argument 
to a ridiculous exaggeration but it is quite 
true that the landscape gardener must 
regard also the changes which come from 
hour to hour during the day. As the sun- 
shine strikes on one side in the morning, 
and on the other side in the afternoon, 
each picture is profoundly modified. The 
artists who work on canvas, — and who have 
had such a comparatively easy time of it, — 
take great pains with the light. It must 
come from such and such a point, must 

90 



ART WHICH MENDS NATURE 

strike at such and such an angle, and must 
give specified effects of sun and shadow. 
One whole field of art study (chiaroscuro) 
is devoted to a consideration of these 
matters. Yet the landscape gardener has 
to shift his chiaroscuro with every striking 
of the clock, and to make it pleasing in 
twelve different styles every day, for 
twelve different months in the year, for 
an indefinite series of years, for the 
thousand different pictures which first 
made up his little garden. From painting 
a cyclorama he has passed to the making 
of a kaleidoscope. 

Something has been said by way of 
comparing the landscape gardener with 
the painter in the treatment of lights and 
shadows. In the management of atmos- 
phere the comparison is equally interesting. 
The painter rightly takes great pains in this 
matter. It is a comparatively simple task 
to draw a tree or a house, but to fill the 
picture with warm sunshine or wet fog is 
more to the abilities of a master. Now, the 
landscape gardener must have atmosphere 
in his pictures, too. To be sure, Nature 
supplies it, but the artist cannot stupidly 
accept what Nature sends, take his chances 

91 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

with the weather, and let it go at that. If 
he cannot make the atmosphere for his 
picture, he must make his picture to fit the 
atmosphere, which is a more heroic under- 
taking truly, and one fit to measure genius. 

The careless reader may feel that this 
is a rather fine-spun theory of the land- 
scape artist's work, but the critics know 
it is not. The truly great work has this 
for its final merit, that it is always true to 
its atmosphere. And, per contra, some of 
the mediocre and unsuccessful pieces seem 
always to have found an atmosphere alien 
to them and inharmonious with their spirit. 
This is one great reason why the Italian 
garden is a failure in England. 

However, the greatness of art is not so 
much in meeting obstacles as in overcom- 
ing them. It is some fair credit to the 
landscape gardener that he has the courage 
to attack such difficulties as those which 
confront him. But it is much more to his 
praise that he surmounts them. This the 
best landscape gardeners really do. 

Consider the work of Frederick Law 
Olmsted. Study carefully the grounds of 
the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, or 
the Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston, or 

92 



ART WHICH MENDS NATURE 

the grounds of the railway station at Wel- 
lesley Farms. Here the whole series of 
obstacles have been frankly met and 
triumphantly overcome. The more one 
looks at any one of these pieces of work, 
changing from one point of view to another, 
coming again and again at different sea- 
sons, at different hours of the day, and in 
different weathers, the surer one grows that 
the whole series of pictures is good. Such 
study will reveal, too, the value of premedi- 
tation in the arrangement of all the parts 
of the landscape, — ^will show that the whole 
thing really came from the hand of an 
artist, and that it is not a fortuitous con- 
course of exceptionally agreeable and 
naturally unrelated elements. 

The camera is the great detective. 
Apply the camera to the works of the land- 
scape gardener and you have one of the 
severest tests. The photographability 
(save the word) of the gardener's work 
shows the perfection of its composition. 
When it shows good masses with pleasing 
lights and shadows from all points of view, 
we may fairly allow that the work is an 
artistic success. 

Wherefore the study of landscape gar- 

93 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

dening is altogether worth while, not alone 
because it offers some aesthetic pleasure, 
but also because it opens a field for aesthetic 
self-expression, and a capital opportunity 
even for the display of the most masterful 
artistic genius. 



94 



ESSAY NUMBER SEVEN 

Concerning the American 
Landscape 



Stream of mp fathers! siveetly still. 
The sunset rays thy valley fill; 
Poured slantwise down the long defile. 
Wave, wood and spire beneath them smile. 
I see the winding Powow fold 
The green hill in its belt of gold. 
And following down its wavy line. 
Its sparkling waters blend with thine. 

John Greenleaf Whittier, 

"The Merrimack" 



97 



CONCERNING THE AMERICAN 
LANDSCAPE 

♦iT T is an habitual trick of complacency 
II with certain Americans to say that no 
one should visit Europe until he has 
seen the sights of this continent. Until 
he has seen the sights! Ah, yes! The 
traveler is a sightseer, and he must have a 
spectacle for his money. There we have 
the whole vulgarity of it in a word. 

This unthoughtful phrase shows what 
such persons unconsciously take to be the 
landscape. For them it is always Niagara 
Falls, Old Faithful, the Big Trees, or the 
Grand Canon. They flit about the con- 
tinent on the fastest trains, from one great 
sight to another. On the intervening 
thousands of miles, they withdraw to their 
staterooms and read the latest novels. 

If such persons are put to it they 
always insist patriotically that we have in 
America the finest landscape known to any 
part of the world, just as they will claim 
the superiority of our political system, or 

99 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the pre-eminence of America in literature. 
Doubtless, they ought to be pardoned for 
telling the truth with such very good 
intentions, but it is sad to think that they 
can give no better reason for the faith that 
was born in them. 

Or, to put it differently: we would all 
like to believe that the American landscape 
is the best the Creator ever designed, but 
our faith is forced to rest on a sadly insuffi- 
cient, unreasoned and uninformed basis of 
observation. 

Mr. Kinosuke Adachi, in a delightful 
essay on Japanese landscape gardening, 
tells how the apprentice-gardener of Nippon 
must take his note-book and travel for 
months through the Flowery Kingdom, ma- 
king intimate studies from nature, with 
notes and sketches of all he sees, and feels, 
and dreams. For he must not only see and 
know the natural landscape, — ^he must feel 
its beauties, and must dream its most inner 
meaning before he can begin to make land- 
scapes of his own. 

It is a fine picture. The young gar- 
dener with all his best aspirations attune, 
and with his soul quick to every touch of 
beauty, going to such an almost holy quest, 

100 



THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 

compels our sympathy and enthusiasm. 
And I wonder if any young American ever 
went forth to learn and feel and dream 
Columbia's beauties, as this Japanese ap- 
prentice goes to study the loveliness of 
Nippon. 

The suggestion is almost overpower- 
ing. The very word shows us how scant 
and superficial has always been our thought 
of the landscape in which we live. What 
might not one find were he to go to Amer- 
ica's fields and lakes and mountains in this 
spirit? Something different, indeed, from a 
series of cheap spectacular public exhibits, 
to be conveniently push-button photo- 
graphed, to be sent home on souvenir post- 
cards, or to be trapped out for a summer 
hotel advertisement. 

No, the landscape is not a show, to be 
seen and forgotten. It is the environment 
in which we live. Out of it we draw breath 
and without it there would be no breathing. 
Through it the sun sends us his heat, and 
the moon her pale mysterious light. We 
walk on the landscape, we drink of it; in it 
we live, and move, and have our being. 
We go a mile, and the landscape goes with 
us. We are born into it, and not even 

101 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

death, nor any other creature can separate 
us from it. 

Yet even with its nearness and its per- 
suasiveness, we disallow it. We forget it. 
Or, if we catch a glimpse of it in the mirror 
of temporary sanity, we go away and 
straightway forget what manner of men we 
are. We do not feel it, cherish it as we 
ought, cultivate its intimate acquaintance, 
nor love it consciously and reasonably. 

The American landscape is, first of all, 
large. This sounds like a vulgar claim to 
make for it; but Aristotle said that any 
object to be beautiful must have a certain 
magnitude. Microscopic views, strictly 
speaking, cannot be beautiful. But height 
and depth and space in a landscape mean 
vastly more than in a statue, a painting, 
or a piece of music. A mountain cannot be 
a mountain until it is a thousand feet high, 
and if a river is not large enough, it may 
be mistaken for a brook. I like Champlain 
better than Lake George, chiefly because 
it is larger. The plains of Kansas and 
Texas are magnificent for their illimitable, 
unbroken stretch. The great passes of the 
Rockies lift our souls out of our puny 
bodies just by virtue of the sheer stupen- 

102 



THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 

dous height of the encircling mountains. 
Yes, mere largeness has its aesthetic value. 
Size counts. 

In the beauty of landscape, size plays 
a more important role than anywhere else, 
outside of military tactics. The vast 
breadth of the ocean, and the height of the 
mountains give us our sense of the sublime. 
Here we have a whole range of most 
poignant human emotions opened and 
measured to us by the big things in the 
landscape. Outside these things we hardly 
know sublimity, and if we use the word in 
any other connection it is usually with 
apologies. 

The American landscape is wild. In 
many places it is truly savage. Here and 
there it has all the fierce tempestuous wild- 
ness of the god-like conflict in which the 
world was made. No one can compare Eng- 
land with America, for example, without see- 
ing that the English landscape is cultivated, 
subdued, humanized, in a sense overcome by 
the operations of man. The German 
forests are ordered like gardens, and look 
no more like the riotous wilds of Canada 
or Minnesota than a chess-board looks like 
a battlefield. To be sure, there is some 

103 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

subjugation of the landscape in America, 
and likely to be more ; but the great reaches 
of the American lakes and mountains must 
stand eternally above the encroachments of 
man. They will forever express, more per- 
fectly than other landscapes, the gigantic 
forces of the creation. 

Again, the American landscape is 
diverse. There are all kinds of landscape 
on our continent. There are big, threaten- 
ing mountains, and quiet, peaceful little 
ones; there are broad inland seas: there 
are vast fertile plains ; there are noble rivers 
and gurgling, gossiping brooks; there are 
pine forests and palmetto groves. Swit- 
zerland has one sort of scenery; Holland 
has another; England, still another: 
America has all kinds. 

But more than diversity, the American 
landscape has versatility. We complain 
sometimes of our changeable weather and 
our extremes of climate, but these extremes 
are responsible, in part, for the kaleidoscopic 
transformations of our fields and hills. In 
a great German text-book of botany I saw 
printed with infinite pains a sketch of 
autumn colors on Lake Ontario. No other 
landscape in the world can furnish autumn 

ICM 




H 

a 
X 

H 




THE PATH ALONG THE HILLSIDE 
Jl'm. T. Knox 



THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 

paintings to compare with ours. Then 
there are our New England winters (not 
unknown to poetry), and our Arizona sum- 
mers, and the springtime in Coronado and 
Palm Beach. 

Think of the fields! There are the 
cotton fields of Alabama, the wheat fields 
of Kansas, the rolling grass fields of Ver- 
mont, and the orchard-covered hillsides of 
New York State. They all cry aloud and 
clap their hands for joy. That painter 
would be immortal who could truly picture 
one of them. I have spent certain happy 
days in the fields of England; I have stood 
on the rolling fields of Alsace, when the 
grain fields stretching away toward the 
Moselle seemed like the choicest lands of 
Paradise; but if I have a dispassionate judg- 
ment left in me, I must still prefer the 
Shenandoah Valley and the banks of the 
Hudson. 

And then what lakes are ours! Su- 
perior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario 
— the pentateuch of the continent. Besides 
them we have thousands of others, — 
Cayuga, Seneca, and Oneida; Champlain 
and George; Memphremagog and Winne- 
pesaukee; Okechobee and the Great Dismal 

105 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Swamp. Killarney is, doubtless, a pretty 
lake, and I would like to go and see it. 
Neufchatel is a beautiful sheet of water, 
and the best of all I saw in Switzerland. 
But one can live with such lakes as Seneca 
and Winnepesaukee. I lived seven years 
with Champlain, and loved it better every 
day. And the landscape was made to be 
lived in, — not for occasional visits. 

We have trees in America. It is no 
vain, boastful Americanism to say we have 
the greatest trees in the world. The red- 
woods of California are indeed a sight, and 
so not proper to the true uses of landscape. 
But the maples of Ohio, the long-leaf pines 
of South Carolina, and the elms of Con- 
necticut are unsurpassed and unsurpassable. 
I once told an Englishman (under provoca- 
tion) that the trees in the Connecticut 
valley were finer than anything in Britain. 
He upbraided me vehemently for prejudice; 
but afterward, when he visited Sunderland, 
Amherst, Old Hadley, and Northampton, 
he was as fully convinced as I was. 

The Himalayas must be glorious. I 
should like to see them before they become 
fashionable. But meanwhile I enjoy the 
Rocky Mountains, and with all my heart I 

106 



THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 

love the Adirondacks and the Green Moun- 
tains. If that poet who made such a de- 
lightful book about Little Rivers had my 
notions of the world, he would make a 
better book about Little Mountains. There 
are the Catskills in New York, and the 
Wichitas in Oklahoma, and the Bear Paw 
Mountains in Montana. These little moun- 
tains are particularly good because men 
can live with them. There are pastures and 
hay fields and gardens of potatoes almost 
to their summits. Here and there one sees 
a zigzagging road and a farmhouse. Men 
and women live there, and the landscape 
grows into their lives. 

The great geographic regions of the 
continent have their characteristic land- 
scape tone. There is the New England 
landscape, which is of its own sort, best 
described by naming it. The stretches of 
flat coast plain scattered with long-leaf 
pine make another kind of landscape in the 
Carolinas. The Great Lakes have their 
proper beauties and the plains theirs, and 
the mountains beyond another character. 
Every one is good in its place. 

Yet these are only general aspects. 
The landscape grows better and better as 

107 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

we get nearer to it, and know it more 
intimately through daily association. Thus, 
the landscape of Litchfield is better than 
the landscape of Connecticut, and the hills 
and meadows of my great-grandfather's 
farm far better than all the rest of Litch- 
field. Every old and real farm has its own 
landscape, which is, indeed, its very physical 
matter. It has its own stream, or hill, or 
woodland, with fields, fences, sentinel trees, 
and eternal stones. Here is where the 
world begins to have a meaning. 

I have hinted that I think the American 
landscape the best in the world; but I must 
be fair, and say that Europe has some 
excellences, too. If one great merit can 
be claimed above all others, it is that in 
Europe men and women live more inti- 
mately into the fields and hills than in 
America. The hills along the Rhine are 
molded into terraces by the hands and feet 
of generations. And if the American sight- 
seer, floating down the river on the Konigin 
Victoria, thinks the terraces spoil the 
spectacle, he should be reminded that the 
landscape does not exist for him, but for 
those who are born into it, and who live 
and marry and die there. 

108 



THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 

The American landscape is fit to be 
admired. It is ours, — our patrimony, — our 
best inheritance, a greater treasury of 
beauty than all the art museums of Europe 
combined, and more truly valuable than 
all deposits of iron, gold and petroleum. 
It ought to be loved, — not weakly and from 
a distance, but intelligently, intimately, 
and with taste and discrimination. 



109 



ESSAY NUMBER EIGHT 

On American Landscape 
Gardening 



upon a southward slope^ that stretched awa^ 
Torvards the sea — long since a loving hand. 
Moved b^ a heart more loving still, had planned. 

And safe-enclosed against the salt sea spray, 

A noble garden. There — shall Tve not say? — 
A loving pair walked in the sunshine bland. 
Breathing the perfumes of their fruit trees, fanned 

By breezes soft, for many a happy day. 

Robert Burns Wilson, 

"The Old Garden" 



113 



ON AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 
GARDENING 

/TX ARDENS of no mean sort flourished 
\_[v in America almost from the establish- 
ment of the first colonies. Even 
before the Pilgrims on the Massachusetts 
coast or the settlers at Jamestown had 
made themselves quite secure from the 
attacks of the Indians, they began to make 
their dwellings homelike with such com- 
forts as their hands could fashion. As soon 
as the colonies became fixed and in a certain 
degree prosperous, taste in the matter of 
gardens developed rapidly. The very 
earliest shipments of supplies from the old 
country included quantities of garden 
seeds, plants and fruit trees. The native 
fruits were also early impressed into culti- 
vation. It is probable that the native 
grapes were grown by Governor Winthrop 
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who was 
assessed a yearly tax of a hogshead of wine 
as early as 1634. This was from the vine- 
yard planted on Governor's Island in Bos- 

115 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

ton Harbor, and granted to Governor 
Winthrop in 1632 for this special purpose. 

About the year 1630 the Reverend 
Francis Higginson, writing back to Eng- 
land from the settlement at Salem, said that 
"Our Governor (Endicott) hath already 
planned a vineyard with great hopes of 
increase. Also mulberries, plums, raspber- 
ries, currants, chestnuts, filberts, walnuts, 
small nuts, huckleberries, haws of white 
thorn." 

Before the War of Independence came 
there were some really notable gardens in 
New England, and some almost magnificent 
estates in Virginia and Maryland. John 
Bartram's garden at Philadelphia dates 
back to 1728, and is still preserved. Mount 
Vernon, the garden of George Washington, 
was planted at about the same time. 

The colonial gardens were almost nec- 
essarily co-ordinated in their development 
with colonial architecture, and it is now 
understood that colonial architecture 
reached a comparatively high artistic level. 
The ''colonial style" in architecture has had 
a great vogue in recent years, a favor which 
has been shared to some extent by colonial 
gardens also. If the gardens have been 

116 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

copied and imitated less frequently than the 
houses, the reason has probably been that 
the patterns were vaguer and harder to 
follow, rather than that they were artistic- 
ally inferior. 

If there was a special artistic weakness 
in the schemes of colonial gardens, it lay 
in their imperfect adaptation to their envi- 
ronment. They copied too slavishly the 
styles of the old country, and clung too 
tenaciously to the plants which had been 
favorites in the gardens over-seas. The 
English farm and garden was naturally the 
chief model, and it is laughable to think 
of men planting peas, sowing grass, or se- 
lecting varieties of fruit upon the strict 
advice of gardeners in Warwick or Kent. 
The following quotation from one of the 
best early American garden books, Cob- 
bett's "American Gardener," is characteris- 
tic. Speaking of the cultivation of the 
vine, he says; "Vineyards, as Tull observes, 
must always be tilled, or they will produce 
nothing of value." He adds that Mr. 
Evelyn says that "when the soil, wherein 
fruit trees are planted, is constantly kept 
in tillage, they grow up to an orchard in 
half the time they would do if the soil 

117 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

were not tilled." The idea of quoting Tull 
and Evelyn to throw light on the cultiva- 
tion of vineyards in America is laughable 
enough, but it was the way books were 
written and gardens were made in that 
day. This extract, too, is from a book 
published as late as 1819. 

These little historical facts sum up 
easily in a few important conclusions which 
we may state as follows: First, the colonists 
had a taste for gardening which they early 
found time and opportunity to indulge. 
Second, for many years they were sadly 
handicapped with the experience, traditions, 
and prejudice of old-world gardening. 
Third, we may infer that this slavery to 
European notions was more effective in the 
field of taste than in the field of practice. 
The design of the garden would be more 
influenced by it than would the selection, 
planting and cultivation of the plants 
themselves. 

There are thus emphatic considerations 
to show why the first civilized Americans 
did not promptly develop a distinctive style 
of gardening on the continent of North 
America. There are many other reasons, 
indeed; and chiefly the broad fact that the 

118 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

production of a characteristic and indi- 
genous style in literature, art or gardening 
is the function of a mature and fully accli- 
matized civilization, something which it has 
taken two centuries to establish in America, 
and which, in fact, is not yet fully ripened. 
It is even now a question whether we have 
attained to a national character in litera- 
ture; and landscape gardening certainly lies 
beyond letters in this respect. 

But lest all these big reasons may make 
it seem absurd for us to look for anything 
American in landscape architecture, it may 
be noted that there are some very power- 
ful influences at work on the other side. 
The greatest of these are soil, climate and 
the native flora. The methods of managing 
the land which succeed in England do not 
succeed in America. The difference in 
climate is very much more important. An 
English garden can not grow in America 
because the climate will not allow it; and 
the meteorological prohibition is still more 
insuperable against the French or the 
Italian garden. But the greatest influence 
at work upon the gardening of the new 
world, — or what should have been always 
the greatest influence, — is the native flora. 

119 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Here the Pilgrims found a continent with 
a store of noble and magnificent trees in- 
comparable in all the world. Here were 
new grasses in the meadows, thousands of 
new shrubs, flowering plants and fruits on 
plains and hills and mountain sides. 
Hundreds on hundreds of these have been 
taken to Europe and naturalized there into 
their park and garden schemes, showing 
their attractiveness and adaptability for 
gardening. In our own country we have 
been inexplicably slow to recognize the 
unmeasurable value of this native wealth 
of trees and fruits and flowers. Only within 
the last twenty-five years, in fact, has that 
recognition gained practical headway. 
When we think of it now it seems very 
strange that American gardeners have not 
always turned their energies to the domes- 
tic plants, rather than to the acclimatization 
of exotics. But the fact remains, they 
have not. 

Landscape gardening in America began 
to be American with the advent of Andrew 
Jackson Downing. Downing was an artist, 
— a real and a great artist, — a genius; and, 
being a genius, he conceived large things. 
He gave the country some new ideas; and 

120 




o ,i; 

Q ^ 

W I 

Q -2 

o "■ 
o 

X 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

it is a national misfortune which has not 
been sufficiently mourned, that he did not 
live to develop those ideas for us. 

In order to understand the work of 
Downing, it is necessary to know something 
of the circumstances by which he was 
surrounded, and especially of the ideas 
brewing in his time among the landscape 
gardeners of England. Launcelot Brown 
had passed his vogue, but had left England 
marked forever with his anti-geometric 
style. Brown had been succeeded by 
Repton, a greater artist, who had given the 
new style a conservative and reasonable 
cast. Repton was being followed by a mul- 
titude of honest plodders, like Loudon, 
Kemp and Milner, who had learned the 
tricks, and who practiced the new style to 
the best of their abilities and opportunities. 
This was the England visited by Downing 
with childlike wonder and delight, yet with 
manlike insight and comprehension. The 
work of Repton evidently made a powerful 
impression upon him, and the horticultural 
achievements of the English gardeners 
equally filled him with new ambitions. In 
America he continued the story of the 
development of the natural style. 

121 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

If we seek to set forth, in short, what 
Downing contributed to American garden- 
ing, we may mention the following: first, 
a high appreciation of the natural land- 
scape of our country; second, the develop- 
ment of all domestic appointments with 
reference to the enjoyment of the surround- 
ing landscape; third, the cultivation of 
gardens full of trees, shrubs and fruits. 
The last of these contributions seems to 
me to have been the most important, as it 
was the most characteristic of Downing. 
His ideal garden was one filled to over- 
flowing with splendid full-grown trees, 
with blooming shrubs and with fertile fruit 
trees. As we study the plans now, criti- 
cizing them beside the style of the present 
day, we say they were too much crowded, 
and that they lack breadth and dignity. 
But, at any rate, they were gardens full 
planted with luxuriant, green growing 
things, and not with carpentered and ma- 
soned furniture. This was a great innova- 
tion in its time, — a real advance, — and 
Downing's ideals had a widespread and 
very powerful influence in America, which 
it would be interesting to trace if we had 
the time. 

122 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

Breadth and dignity came with 
Frederick Law Olmsted. This man was 
another genius, and he fortunately lived 
long enough to give the world what was in 
him. Olmsted was in every way the proper 
and timely successor of Downing. He 
took the ideas of Downing, developed and 
perfected them, and added to them impor- 
tant contributions of his own. The love of 
native landscape was again emphasized; 
but though this was, perhaps, the great con- 
trolling principle of all Olmsted's work, 
it was not his discovery. Downing's idea 
of adapting the scheme of landscape gar- 
dening to the natural surroundings was so 
much developed, extended and emphasized 
by Olmsted that it may fairly be said that 
it gained a new meaning in his hands. The 
truly masterly manner in which this one 
thing was accomplished, — the adaptation 
of the improvement scheme to the character 
of the tract in hand, — was the most charac- 
teristic quality of Olmsted's work, and 
the one in which his genius soared to its 
loftiest flights. Striking examples may be 
cited in Mount Royal Park, Montreal, and 
the World's Fair Grounds, Chicago. 

Olmsted also discovered the American 

123 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

flora. In the landscape-gardening way, he 
was the first to make free and effective 
use of it; and this is probably his most 
truly original contribution to American 
landscape art. Downing knew some of the 
native trees, but he cultivated chiefly ex- 
otics, especially in fruits and shrubs. 
Olmsted boldly laid these all aside, and, on 
occasion, used only the commonest and 
meanest of the native shrubs and herbs. 
The meadow and pasture weeds became 
the materials for painting in his greatest 
triumphs. How important this new idea 
was may be seen from the wide vogue it 
has achieved among Olmsted's followers. 
Then came Mr. Charles A. Piatt and 
Carrere and Hastings. These men were 
the center of a group, each member of 
which added something to the general 
wealth of Italian gardens in America. 
Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., Mr. Stanford White, 
Messrs. McKim & Mead, and even the 
younger Olmsteds, have built gardens in 
the Italian fashion; and since these 
gardens in America depend rather on a 
trick of imitating details than on a genius 
for originating new ideas, the work of these 
well-trained men has been about equally 

124 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

successful. To a certain extent Mr. Piatt 
has been the leader and spokesman of this 
group; and his work, as much as any, 
shows a real individuality and a masterly 
good taste. 

The progress of the Italian style in 
America, however, has been one great 
unified movement. By some it has been 
regarded as a mere passing cult, an artist's 
whim, a temporary aberration of good taste, 
which would soon give way to saner things. 
This view is prejudiced, short-sighted, 
wrong. The appearance of the Italian 
style on our soil at this time was just as 
natural, even inevitable, as the Declaration 
of Independence or the Meat Trust. It 
has been the outgrowth of our state of 
civilization. Given, on one hand, a group of 
architects whose training has been largely 
European, and whose ideals have been 
formed in Paris, Rome and Florence, and, 
on the other hand, a group of excessively 
wealthy clients who are also fairly well 
Europeanized, and nothing under the Stars 
and Stripes could prevent the introduction 
of those methods which made the gardens 
of Versailles and of Rome the wonder of 
the world. 

125 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

The attempt to show that the Italian 
style of gardening is essentially bad, or 
that it is improper to this continent, even, 
is quite as futile as to try to prove its 
accidental development here. The test of 
centuries has shown that the style is good 
in itself — very good. There are many argu- 
ments of expediency and adaptation to be 
made in its favor anywhere. As to its 
adaptability to American conditions, that is 
more nearly a debatable question. Of 
course, it must be recognized that different 
materials have to be used to build Italian 
gardens in America, and various details 
require important alterations. In these 
matters mistakes are easy, and it would 
have been very surprising had the begin- 
ners not made grave errors ; but these errors 
do not affect the style itself, nor prove its 
failure, any more than the great abuses of 
democracy in America prove the failure of 
our system of government. 

There is room on this great continent 
for every style of landscape gardening. It 
is worth while to notice, by way of illus- 
tration, that a number of gardens are now 
being done in the Japanese style. Indeed, 
each and every possible style may have 

126 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

a real suitability to some special circum- 
stances. If we inquire which style is gen- 
erally best adapted to American conditions, 
we are still away from the point, for adapta- 
tion does not go by generalities, but has 
a meaning only in view of concrete condi- 
tions. Furthermore, all foreign styles, even 
the well-reputed English style, must be 
modified to suit American requirements, 
or it is as much a failure as any other. 

Is there, then, an American style of 
landscape gardening? or will there ever be 
one? These questions cannot be answered 
categorically and with great confidence. 
If we have not yet developed a national 
style in music, painting, literature or archi- 
tecture, it is quite too much to expect that 
greater progress should have been made in 
landscape gardening. Some things have, 
indeed, been done in a truly American way. 
We have the park systems of Chicago and of 
Hartford; we have many magnificent pri- 
vate estates, like Biltmore and Faulkner 
Farm; and we have had the Exposition at 
Buffalo. These are only typical examples, 
showing the art of landscape architecture 
in a fairly Americanized form. At least 
we are no longer dependent on exotic plans, 

127 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

plants nor gardeners. With just pride we 
may label the whole thing "Made in 
America." 

In another chapter some attempt has 
been made to determine what are the char- 
acteristic features of the indigenous 
American landscape. We found that it is 
built on a very large scale, that it contains 
a great variety of motifs, and that it pos- 
sesses a large number of extraordinary and 
spectacular features. All of these things 
are more or less, — and at the bottom more 
rather than less, — related to the present and 
future status of landscape art in America, 
especially to the large and the characteristic 
expressions of it. Niagara Falls must 
eventually be the center of a national park; 
and the Big Trees are already reserved for 
the purposes of scenery. Pike's Peak, Mt. 
Washington and Mt. Rainier will some day 
work into the compositions of American 
landscape architects; and it is not beyond 
the reach of a reasonable faith or a good 
imagination to think that the Great Prairies 
and the Everglades may some time and 
somewhere enjoy the mastery of the artist's 
touch. Then when Niagara Falls and the 
Great Lakes, Pike's Peak, the Presidential 

128 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

Range, the Arizona desert, and the Father 
of Waters have received the fulness of 
scenic development, when they have been 
made the themes of great and adequate 
park projects, when they have been set forth 
for human enjoyment, with all the help 
that art can give to the great achievements 
of nature, then surely we shall have so 
much distinctively American landscape 
architecture. 

For years we have made ourselves 
disagreeable boasting about the great un- 
developed resources of America, meaning 
coal deposits, iron ore and tillable land: 
it has seldom occurred to us that our unde- 
veloped resources of beautiful landscape are 
even as great, and in their way quite as 
valuable. If American genius is proud of 
its native achievements in industry, the field 
lies open for similar achievements in art. 
The development of these resources will be 
the special task of American landscape 
gardening. 

There is another way of predicting — 
perhaps less accurately — the trend of land- 
scape gardening for the future. This 
method consists in comparing landscape 
gardening with the other arts, which have 

129 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

already developed much further than 
landscape art, and proceeding on the fair 
assumption that the latter will follow some- 
what the same course that the former have 
followed. The comparison may be con- 
veniently made with painting, and for 
simplicity's sake may be confined to Amer- 
ica, though, of course, the same phylogeny 
would be found anywhere else. 

The development of painting presents 
three principal stages, — not to analyze more 
closely. These may be recorded and sum- 
marily characterized as follows: 

1. The period of the representation of 
details. Smibert, West and Copley built 
up their pictures by drawing in every pos- 
sible detail, seen or unseen. Every button 
on a coat and every stitch on a cuff were 
represented as fully and as accurately as the 
skill and means of the artist would permit. 

2. The period of the representation of 
material masses. The painters early learned 
that masses are more important than de- 
tails, and so the effort was turned from the 
latter to the former. The so-called school 
of impressionism, while earning an unpopu- 
lar reputation through extravagances, 
nevertheless settled the thinking world in 

130 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

favor of the broad effects of masses in 
preference to a mere childlike exhibition of 
curious details. William Morris Hunt, 
George Inness, John La Farge, and nearly- 
all the most famous of modern American 
painters exemplify this method. 

3. The period of spiritual representa- 
tion. It is commonly recognized to be one 
thing to picture the material masses which 
the eye sees, and quite another to represent 
the spiritual significance of such masses as 
they appear to the sympathetic mind. It 
is understood that some of the most suc- 
cessful painters of the material world are 
quite unable to open for us this higher 
spiritual world. For it is generally recog- 
nized to be a higher world, and to require 
higher talents for its communication. 
Whistler, John H. Twachtman and Mel- 
chers may fairly be credited with this 
superior ability. 

Now let us see what we can find in the 
field of landscape architecture correspond- 
ing to this evolution. 

I. We have the period of details fully 
exemplified in Downing and his many fol- 
lowers. Their gardening dealt almost 
exclusively with specimen plants. These 

131 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

details were to them supremely important. 
It would be easy to press this story further 
back, and to show how an earlier generation 
exhibited a more narrowed and inartistic 
appreciation of details: but we are not 
making a complete analysis of this matter, 
and we are confining ourselves arbitrarily 
to what has taken place in America within 
our own knowledge. 

2. Then came Olmsted and the su- 
premacy of the mass. Mass planting has 
been the watchword ever since. Instead of 
cultivating one Japanese magnolia, Olmsted 
planted a carload of roadside dogwood in 
a single group. While the important prin- 
ciple herein involved has been very imper- 
fectly applied, even by Olmsted's most 
careful followers — as Manning and Eliot — it 
has. nevertheless, gained general recogni- 
tion, at least among professional landscape 
architects. 

3. Where, when, how and from whom 
shall we see the spiritual treatment of 
landscape? Music, literature, painting and 
sculpture are spiritualized. Even utilitarian 
architecture, in some hands, takes on this 
higher expression. Shall we not some day 
see the landscape treated wdth a touch so 

132 



ON AMERICAN GARDENING 

sympathetic, so full of inspiration and 
mastery, that the whole picture will stand 
forth with a new meaning? If a painted 
landscape can suggest human passion or 
divine mercies, shall not the landscape 
itself, with its real hills, trees, water and 
enveloping atmosphere, speak with yet 
directer and more emphatic language of still 
higher spiritual themes? 



133 



ESSAY NUMBER NINE 

As to the Field of Criticism 




Q 

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X 

9 * 

2 a: 




VETERANS 

Mrs. Frank C. Kellogg 



The charm of Normandy and the Rhine prov- 
inces, as of New England, lies in the broken, 
undulating surface. To whatever point of the 
compass we turn there is unity in variety. The 
amphitheater of hills surrounding Amherst in Massa- 
chusetts does not grow monotonous to those who 
look out upon it from day to day. The encircling 
parapets always have a new tale to tell, a new 
wonder to reveal. No sun gilds them twice in just 
the same way, no atmosphere is repeated for any 
two days, and the mantle of green in summer, 
and the robe of white in winter, are never the same 
from year to year. 

J. C. Van Dyke, 
"Nature for Its Own Sake" 



137 



AS TO THE FIELD OF CRITICISM 

•YlVf^ E have taken a brief look at Amer- 
^^^^ ican landscape gardening. In do- 
ing so we have glanced hurriedly 
at certain American landscape gardeners and 
their works. We have done nothing more, 
however, than to catch a glimpse, as from 
the window of a hurrying express train, of a 
few of the nearest and most outstanding 
facts. Even yet we have not the long- 
wished opportunity for a detailed and 
critical examination of materials; but we 
must, at least, assume the critic's point of 
view. It is a point of view which we have 
seldom (almost never) yet attained, but a 
point from which matters of large import 
may be seen. 

It will be quite worth our while to 
consider for a moment what relation 
criticism bears to art, — the critic to the 
artist. We do this, of course, with our 
own special art in mind, but we must take 
our instruction chiefly from what has been 

139 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

done in other fields. In the field of land- 
scape architecture criticism is almost 
unknown ; and this fact presents unquestion- 
ably the greatest handicap under which 
the art labors. The landscape architects 
themselves appear to be not only blind to 
this defect, but they seem almost to present 
an organized opposition to every improve- 
ment in this direction. 

Consider, first of all, the refinement to 
which criticism has been brought in the 
field of literature. The authenticated works 
of Shakespeare may be printed in a com- 
fortable pocket volume, but the books about 
Shakespeare and his works would fill all 
the Carnegie libraries between Hyannis, 
Massachusetts, and Walla Walla, Washing- 
ton. These treat every conceivable phase 
of the poet's life and work, viewed from 
every possible angle, from the Grecian 
structure of his plays to the rambles with 
Ann Hathaway on Sunday afternoons along 
the shady field-paths of Warwick. Homer 
has been dead some thousands of years. 
His nation is dead, and the language in 
which he wrote is dead; but there meet 
daily in many classrooms thousands of boys 
and girls to discuss his qualities of style, 

140 



THE FIELD OF CRITICISM 

and to wonder what made Helen act so. 
A volume of criticism even greater in 
proportion to the apparent need, washes 
hourly across the meadows of current liter- 
ature. Mr. William Dean Howells has writ- 
ten many books, but his critics have written 
five pages to his one. The newspapers are 
full of talk about Kipling, Barry and Mr. 
Dooley; and if there is a dinner party any- 
where in the land where novels, plays and 
biographies are not discussed the guests 
must be very stupid, or very interesting, 
for they are very rare. 

Does all this flood of criticism serve 
any use? Does it fertilize the soil from 
which literature springs? or to change the 
figure, is criticism a mere parasitic growth? 
A good deal of it does, indeed, represent 
a cheap parasitism, but proper criticism is 
nevertheless, the very life of literature. 
Criticism is to literature what the cultivator, 
the pruning knife, and the spray pump are 
to the apple orchard. Apple-trees will 
grow without care, but the wild pasture 
trees never bear fruit of any value. It is 
only when the trees are set in proper soil, 
in orderly rows, pruned, fertilized and 
cleansed, and given continual expert care 

141 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

by the horticulturist, that they bear full 
loads of perfect apples. 

No; a progressive literature without 
constant criticism is an impossibility. Most 
productive writers recognize this. They 
welcome intelligent criticism, even when 
it rests heavily on their own works. Some 
writers, and all publishers, industriously 
cultivate criticism. 

The actor is, perhaps, as obviously 
dependent on the critic as is any other 
artist. In the first place, he works with a 
company of fellow artists whose judgments 
he must meet with some precision, in order 
to make his playing go at all. Next, he is 
usually supervised by a manager whose keen 
criticism is supplied with peculiar sanc- 
tions. In the third place, his acting must 
pass under the scrutiny of the professional 
critic who does not hesitate to say in the 
morning paper that the whole business was 
a shabby plagiarism of Booth or DeWolf 
Hopper, without ginger, grace or gumption. 
Finally, the public, passing in front of the 
box office, pass a very positive sort of 
criticism upon the art of both playwright 
and actor. It is easy to point out instances 
of able actors who have suffered under the 

142 



THE FIELD OF CRITICISM 

unjust strictures of any or all these various 
critics. It is not so easy to prove, however, 
that any of them have had their powers 
permanently impaired by such misunder- 
standings ; and it is all but self-evident that 
without this ordeal of criticism the art of 
acting would never rise above the lower 
levels of mediocrity. 

In like manner, the arts of painting, 
sculpture and music enjoy the stimulus 
and direction of a well-organized criticism. 
What would be the value of the annual 
picture salon without criticism? And the 
great music festivals are partly for present 
enjoyment, but partly, too, for the sake 
of future improvement. 

On every hand, in every art (except only 
landscape architecture), criticism is wel- 
comed, and the critic is recognized as filling 
a position of legitimate service. Not 
every critic is himself an artist. Probably 
the best dramatic critics are not actors, nor 
the best critics of pictures painters, but the 
field offers attractive employment for high 
talents. 

We all allow that landscape gardening 
is the youngest of the arts, but its ex- 
ceeding immaturity is in nothing else so 

143 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

completely demonstrable, as in the almost 
childish attitude of the rank and file of 
landscape artists toward criticism. The 
contrast which they offer when compared 
with novelists and actors is discouraging. 

I have recently organized and con- 
ducted a somewhat extensive correspond- 
ence with the landscape architects of 
America. Naturally, I have written most 
freely to my own acquaintances, but I have 
also written personal letters to many others. 
In this correspondence I have been as polite 
as my unhopeful expectations could teach 
me to be ; and my direct questions have been 
as few and as mild as was consistent 
with getting any information at all. Some 
data and some valuable expressions of 
opinion have, indeed, been secured; but the 
big result of the whole investigation is to 
show the very general and hearty suspicion 
in which all such inquiries are held. 

Some landscape gardeners politely, but 
firmly, refuse to give any information 
regarding their own works or anybody 
else's. With rare exceptions, information, if 
given at all, is given grudgingly, as though 
a favor had been presumptuously and 
unwarrantably asked. This being the atti- 

144 



THE FIELD OF CRITICISM 

tude toward the giving of information, 
what is to be expected when these men 
are asked for an expression of opinion? 
The majority of them refuse fiatly to give 
it. It seems to be considered a crime to 
say that Mr. Brown's design for the public 
park is good, and Mr. White's design for 
the college campus inadequate. Indeed, 
some of these good men appear to feel that 
it is unprofessional and ungentlemanly 
to think about such things. 

Let us understand now and evermore 
that this attitude is wrong and harmful. 
The right way is to welcome and assist 
criticism. Well-informed, intelligent criti- 
cism will clear the air, will set a standard 
of taste, will foster a wider and better 
appreciation of our gracious art, will tend 
to the improvement of technique, will set 
higher ideals before our professional 
workers, and in a thousand ways will help 
both the makers and the enjoyers of land- 
scape pictures. 

In the field of landscape architecture 
the critic meets certain practical difficulties 
which do not exist in other fields, or 
which elsewhere offer less serious obstacles. 
It is quite possible to read all the works 

145 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

of almost any popular or classic writer, 
and to know what his entire output has 
been. The experienced art critic has seen 
practically all the works of the masters; 
and before he writes about Dewing's paint- 
ings, or of St. Gaudens' sculpture, he will 
have seen a majority of the artist's pro- 
ductions. Now it is practically impossible 
for any critic to know the work of any 
landscape architect in this complete fashion. 
Mr. Warren Manning — to use a specific 
example — has undertaken over 750 pieces 
of work in his professional career. These 
are scattered all over the continent, from 
coast to coast, and from Canada almost 
to the Gulf. And the work of every other 
landscape architect is only more or less 
scattered and inaccessible. 

Nor is this all. Perhaps it is not even 
the worst. Nearly all of this work exists 
anonymously. Alfred Henry Lewis and 
Edith Wharton put their names on their 
books; and 200,000 copies of "Coniston" 
repeat the name of Winston Churchill 
200,000 times. But when Frederick Law 
Olmsted works with equal skill and devo- 
tion to make Franklin Park a place of 
beauty and of joy forever, there remains 

146 



THE FIELD OF CRITICISM 

no sign nor mark to repeat his name to 
the thousands who thoughtlessly enjoy 
his labors. It is well-nigh impossible to 
discover the existing works of particular 
landscape architects. It would require a 
directory and a chart to do it; and it seems 
hardly necessary to remark that such a 
directory has not yet been compiled. 

In many places where good works of 
landscape gardening exist, it seems to be 
a point of professional etiquette to keep 
the names of the designers a secret. 

Another difficulty lies in the fact that 
a landscape gardener's picture is not 
finished when it leaves his hand. Nearly 
always the lapse of years must be waited 
for its completion. Sometimes a generation 
must pass; and it would be hard in any 
case for the artist himself to say just at 
what moment his masterpiece gave the 
fullest expression of his original design. 

What is even worse is the positive 
infraction of the design by ignorant or wil- 
ful meddlers. A gardener, a park superin- 
tendent, a half-baked engineer, or a thrifty 
contractor executes the artist's design. 
Sometimes he executes it to death. This 
work is often performed ignorantly, often 

147 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

without s5aTipathy, sometimes with uncon- 
cealed hostility. How, then, shall we judge 
the designer by the result? 

It is true that artists, like other people, 
must be judged chiefly by results; and 
the best landscape architects provide means 
for overcoming or mitigating these diffi- 
culties, just as they provide against other 
technical difficulties in their work. Never- 
theless, under the best of management 
these difficulties exist in large measure, 
and form a serious barrier to the progress 
of criticism in the field of landscape 
gardening art. 

We may here pass over the fact that 
criticism in the field of landscape archi- 
tecture has no traditions, no criteria, no 
background of history. These defects are 
real and serious, but they are not vital, 
neither are they permanent. They belong 
only to the infancy of our art, and will 
be outgrown in due time. 



148 



ESSAY NUMBER TEN 

On American Landscape 
Gardeners 



In short, the landscape gardener s tasf( is to 
produce beautiful pictures. Nature supplies him 
with the materials, alivays giving him vitalit}), light, 
atmosphere, color, and details, and often /ove/jj or 
imposing forms in the conformation of the soil; 
and she Tvill see to the thorough finishing of his 
design. But the design is the main thing, and the 
design must he of his own conceiving. 

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, 

"Art Out-of-Doors" 



151 




CO 

i I 
O 




X a 
lit 

o '^ 

Q ^ 
2 

U 

n 



ON AMERICAN LANDSCAPE 
GARDENERS 

♦HEAVING in mind now what has been 
uJ ^^^^ °^ *^^ state of criticism in land- 
scape architecture, let us try to 
apply our principles briefly to the work of 
American landscape gardeners. Anything 
which we can do now will be, of course, 
only the most meager and fragmentary 
beginning. To criticise the work of Down- 
ing, for example, one ought to search out 
carefully the few places which he designed. 
These places should then be thoroughly 
examined to determine what part of their 
present aspect is due to the plans of 
Downing, and what to the changes of later 
gardeners. But, most of all, to judge 
Andrew Jackson Downing fairly, it would 
be important to look up the work of ihose 
immediately inspired by him. The connec- 
tion between Downing and Calvert Vaux 
should be studied, but more especially 
should the critic investigate the works of 

153 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Frank J. Scott. It is hardly necessary to 
say that the present writer has not done all 
this with reference to the work of Down- 
ing, to say nothing of the hundreds of 
able men who have succeeded to his pro- 
fession in America. Once more, however, 
the writer pleads the immeasurable im- 
portance of this kind of criticism, and the 
necessity of making a beginning some- 
where. 

In undertaking a discussion of Ameri- 
can landscape gardeners, we are forced to 
traverse, in part, the same ground which 
we have already covered in speaking of 
American landscape gardening. In this 
case, however, our point of view is alto- 
gether different. Then we were tracing the 
development of the art; now we shall try 
to estimate the characters and achieve- 
ments of the men. 

Professor Bailey names Andre Par- 
mentier as the first professional landscape 
gardener in America. However, the 
naming of any man, in advance of Down- 
ing, as the pioneer must, of course, be very 
arbitrary; and with all due respect to the 
excellent gardens and the able gardeners 
of colonial days, we may fairly dismiss 

154 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

them all with the observation that real 
American landscape gardening did not 
exist until about 1850. 

Downing is by all odds the first of 
American landscape gardeners. He did 
some little work on private places about 
Newburgh and in Washington on the 
grounds about the Capitol, and the Smith- 
sonian Institution. Very little, if any, of 
this work has been preserved. Downing's 
ability as a student of this art is nearly 
always judged by one piece of work, 
namely, his book on Landscape Garden- 
ing, with occasionally some slight addition 
for the pleasing essays in the "Horti- 
culturist." These writings, indeed, show 
a man of great refinement of character, 
a man of rather severely voluptuous tastes, 
of somewhat aristocratic temper, retiring 
and sensitive, fond of everything beautiful, 
but with a taste influenced by the spirit of 
his time toward the curiosities of beauty, 
a man highly appreciative of the natural 
landscape, but still more passionately fond 
of trees, shrubs and fruits. We must not 
forget that Downing — like hundreds of his 
followers — ^was a nurseryman before he 
was a landscape gardener, and this fact had 

155 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

a marked influence, as we may see, on all 
his work. 

If we are to form any fair judgment of 
Downing, however, we must not stop here. 
We must rather draw our conclusions 
largely from the disciples who followed 
him. Every great artist or teacher leaves 
a group of disciples behind. These men 
work over, and put into effect, the ideas 
of the master. Judged by the number and 
character of his disciples, Andrew Jackson 
Downing's name is the most illustrious in 
the entire history of American agriculture, 
horticulture, or landscape gardening. He 
has been the model and the beau ideal of 
every pomologist, fruit grower and nursery- 
man, as well as the direct inspiration of 
almost every native landscape gardener 
which our country has produced. Every 
nurseryman who has grown trees and 
shrubs in America during the last fifty 
years has had some fairly definite notions 
of improving his own grounds, of helping 
his neighbors to improve theirs, and of help- 
ing in the beautification of public places. 
His ideas of these things have been taken 
"en bloc" from Downing. From the ranks 
of these nurserymen have come a majority 

156 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

of our best landscape gardeners; and the 
completeness with which they have been 
controlled by Downing's ideas would be 
pitiful had the results been less satisfactory 
or the leadership less worthy. Other ideas 
have recently begun to overlie those of 
Downing, but his work still exercises a 
tremendous influence. This influence, 
especially in the recent past, has been so 
plain, and so easily traced, that we may 
fairly allow it to be the chief support of 
Downing's reputation as a landscape artist. 

By this same means, better than any 
other, can we determine also what were 
the Downing ideas of landscape gardening. 
For this purpose we may select for special 
study Mr. Frank J. Scott, who describes 
himself as Downing's friend and pupil. 
In Scott's "Suburban Home Grounds" are 
found a considerable number of designs 
of most excellent draftsmanship, and a 
large number of engravings corresponding 
perfectly with the plans. From these 
plans and pictures we may draw certain 
definite conclusions as to Scott's work, and 
these conclusions may fairly be carried over 
to the work of Downing. 

I. He aimed at an informal or "natu- 

157 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

ral" style. His main walks and drives 
were usually curved, and his trees were 
not placed in straight rows, except where 
the circumstances plainly demanded it. 
This informality, however, was de- 
cidedly restrained, — we might even say 
constrained and stiff." It fell far short of 
the free and easy natural style of the 
present day. 

2. Trees were used chiefly as individ- 
uals. Each one was given room for its 
complete development. There were few 
groups, and no masses. It will be remem- 
bered that this principle has been most 
strenuously preached by all the disciples of 
Downing, though it is now being generally 
abandoned. 

3. Lawns are small and scrappy, the 
space being taken up very largely with 
trees and flower beds. Each design, there- 
fore, presents a somewhat jumbled 
appearance. 

4. Trees of many kinds were used in 
nearly every place, and, as these were all 
treated as specimens, the whole assumed 
the air of an arboretum. This arboretum 
scheme is highly characteristic of the dis- 
ciples of Downing. These principles 2, 3 

158 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

and 4 in the hands of men of linnited taste, 
led directly to what Professor Bailey has 
aptly characterized as the "nursery style" 
of landscape gardening. 

5. Considerable numbers of fruit trees 
were used on the grounds, being placed in 
such a manner as to become a part of the 
decorative scheme. 

We shall see in a moment that modern 
taste has confirmed and extended Principle 
I. Numbers 2, 3 and 4 have been almost 
reversed, and Number 5 has been neglected. 
The older and more conservative land- 
scape gardeners of the present moment, 
however, hold rather closely to these 
principles of Downing as here deduced 
from the work of Scott. 

Before leaving this discussion of 
Downing's methods it is proper to inquire 
their source. Downing did not originate 
them, however great his originality may 
have been. We may easily recall the fact 
that Downing traveled in England, and 
that he most cordially admired the land- 
scape gardening which he saw there. Let 
us remember further that this was the 
time of Edward Kemp; and a comparison 
of the work of these two men will show 

159 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

that, though Downing was by far the abler 
man, the methods of gardening, and the 
whole point of view of the two men were 
alike to an extraordinary degree. The state 
of landscape gardening in England in that 
day — 1 83 5- 1 840 — may be pictured with a 
few strokes of the pen. The extravagances 
of Brown and his immediate imitators had 
been succeeded by the practical common 
sense and masterful genius of Repton. 
In the hands of Repton the natural style 
had been established on a rational basis, 
and for all future generations. Then had 
followed the inevitable bevy of copyists, 
praising Repton's mastery by constant 
unimaginative repetition of his tricks, — 
holding to his methods without his genius, 
— precisely as Downing's disciples were to 
follow Downing one or two decades later. 
Downing was influenced chiefly by Repton, 
but this influence came to him largely at 
second hand, even as you and I began our 
work under the second-hand inspiration of 
the genius of Newburgh. 

Frederick Law Olmsted stands easily 
as the greatest figure in American 
landscape gardening. By many good 
authorities he is rated as the greatest 

160 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

artist of any sort ever produced in America. 
In a recent vote taken among leading 
American landscape architects and students 
of the craft, Olmsted was awarded the 
primacy by a majority lacking only one 
vote of unanimity. There are, indeed, some 
few persons who show a wish to dispraise 
his work. These persons say that he took 
over from another man the design for 
Central Park, that he enjoyed the credit 
for a great deal of work done by 
Calvert Vaux, Ignaz Pilat and others. 
Every claim of this sort might easily be 
admitted without shaking his reputation 
in the least. Many of his later works, if 
not all of them, are greatly superior to 
Central Park; and if his reputation over- 
shadowed those of the men with whom he 
was associated, it was not because of any 
personal advantage unfaithfully taken. 

Olmsted was engaged on many works, 
of which the following are only a few : 

Central Park, New York. 

Prospect Park, Brooklyn. 

University of California, Berkeley. 

Washington Park, Brooklyn. 

South Park, Chicago. 

Morningside Park, New York. 

161 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston. 

Mount Royal Park, Montreal. 

Capitol Grounds, Washington. 

Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. 

Belle Isle Park, Detroit. 

Capitol Grounds, Albany. 

Franklin Park, Boston. 

Charles River Embankment, Boston. 

Parks of Buffalo. 

Wood Island Park, Boston. 

Marine Park, Boston. 

Lynn Woods, Lynn. 

World's Fair, Chicago. 
Of these, perhaps the best known are the 
World's Fair, at Chicago (especially the 
Wooded Island and Lagoon), Mount Royal 
Park, Montreal, Biltmore, N. C, and the 
railway station grounds of the Boston & 
Albany Railroad. If we add to this list 
Franklin Park, Boston, and the Muddy 
Brook Parkway, we have a reasonably 
representative selection of his best and 
most characteristic work. 

However, in any consideration of 
Olmsted's work, careful attention should 
be given to his written reports. Among 
these should be specially mentioned his 
report on Franklin Park, and his *'Consid- 

162 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

erations of the Justifying Value of a Pub- 
lic Park." With these various works in 
hand we may be justified in a few generali- 
zations regarding his methods and their 
results. 

1. He revitalized the natural style. 
Brown, Repton, Downing and all their 
followers had professed the natural style, 
but the works of Olmsted were so much 
more truly like the best of Nature's work, 
that the whole doctrine of naturalness in 
landscape art received a new meaning at 
his hands. To-day, at least in America, 
the natural style and the Olmstedian style 
are synonymous, while the works of all 
his predecessors would be rated artificial. 

2. Olmsted introduced a new apprecia- 
tion of natural scenery. Other men had 
been gardeners or improvers on Nature. 
He first taught us to admire Nature in 
her own dress. Downing was, of course, a 
lover of natural landscape, but this element 
of his character was not brought strongly 
forward in his landscape gardening. 

3. Adaptation to site and surroundings 
was the keynote of Olmsted's work, and 
this also amoi-.ited to a new discovery in 
landscape art. In this direction Olmsted 

163 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

had a peculiar gift which is everywhere 
recognized as one of his distinguishing 
characteristics. It will be readily seen that 
this faculty was closely associated with 
his appreciation of natural scenery men- 
tioned above. 

4. He discovered the native flora. 
Though artistically less important than 
other contributions of Olmsted, this was 
the most revolutionary of his innovations. 
Downing was a collector of plants, with 
a fondness for what was rare and exotic. 
Gardeners everywhere were planting Japa- 
nese magnolias, purple beeches and Cam- 
perdown elms. Olmsted turned boldly, and 
not without violent opposition, to the 
commonest roadside shrubs. He adopted 
the outcast weeds. Peter after his vision 
could not have been more completely con- 
verted to what had previously been thought 
unclean. Up to this time, strange as it 
may seem, American plants had been more 
used in Europe than here. With the 
richest indigenous flora of any country in 
the world, we were still planting the 
species and varieties of European nurseries. 
We may remark further that this use of 
the native flora was the one Olmstedian 

164 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

principle most quickly acclaimed and 
adopted by others. It has had a tremen- 
dous vogue in this country. It is the point 
in which Olmsted has been most fully, 
successfully and sometimes slavishly 
imitated. 

5. The native plants were used in 
large quantities. Common dogwood and 
viburnums were put in by carloads. For 
the first time in the history of landscape 
art, plants were adequately massed. This 
principle was not carried to an extreme, how- 
ever; and, in fact, it has not yet received the 
development which it merits. While it re- 
ceived less popular approval than item 4 
above, its intrinsic importance from the 
standpoint of good art is much greater. 

6. Indigenous plants were given their 
natural environment. Much attention was 
given to the development of this principle, 
especially by some of the followers of 
Olmsted. Up to this time, along with the 
preference for exotics, had gone the gar- 
dener's pride in growing plants out of 
their altitude, latitude and longitude. The 
Alpine garden was the gardener's pet, and 
Downing himself nursed his lonely fig-trees 
through the cold New York winters. 

165 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Items 4, 5 and 6, though quite inde- 
pendent, are all closely related. They deal 
with the use of native plants in a natural 
way. It is rather odd that these radical 
changes in landscape-gardening methods 
should have come from a man who always 
mourned his ignorance of plants. Another 
fact is still more curious, viz., that Olmsted 
should be generally criticised for his weak- 
ness as a plantsman. And the present 
writer wishes just here to record his most 
emphatic dissent from this current criti- 
cism. It is one thing to know the names 
of plants, and quite a different thing to 
know the plants themselves. It is a still 
greater accomplishment to know how to 
use plants to make pictures. Every 
botanizing old maid, male or female, knows 
plant names. Every good nurseryman 
knows the plants. Only the artist and the 
genius know how to blend these materials 
into pictures of abiding beauty; and here 
is where Frederick Law Olmsted qualified. 

7. Olmsted's roads were peculiar and 
characteristic — and peculiarly and charac- 
teristically successful. A considerable part 
of their success is due to their adaptation 
to the contour of the land, and is thus 

166 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 



related to Principle 3 discussed above. 
Their striking individuality appears to be 
largely the result of their nodal treatment, 
more fully discussed below. As a third 
characteristic, they were always laid on 
natural lines. This means that there are 
no straight lines and no mathematical 
curves, either in horizontal projection or 
in profile. In this matter of road design 
Olmsted has been widely followed, usually 
without marked success. 

8. Olmsted appears to have been the 
first conspicuously to adopt the principle 
of rhythm in natural landscape composition, 
though any artist composing freely, and 
with a proper feeling for his work will 
inevitably follow this method more or less. 
This method cannot be formulated in a 
sentence, but it may be explained most 
simply in its application to roads. We may 
suppose that every road (especially such 
long "circuit drives" as Olmsted delighted 
to make) may be composed of a certain 
number of nodes, connected by corre- 
sponding internodes. The main features of 
the landscape composition come at the 
nodes. Here will be the best views. Here 
will be the most attractive plantings. Here 

167 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the road will make its principal turn; and 
at the nodes will come the changes of 
grade. For instance, there would be a node 
where the drive crosses a small stream. 
The grade changes from a decline to an 
incline. There is a promising curve. There 
is a specially fine view of the stream. 
There is a bridge to be admired. The 
plantings along the brookside are altogether 
different from those on the meadow just 
passed. Everything marks this for a node. 
After enjoying this picture to our time's 
content, we take the ascent toward the 
upland beyond, and after traversing a com- 
paratively featureless internode we come 
out on the high land above, where gradient 
and curvature change once more, and 
where the far outlook blesses us with 
emotions quite different from those borne 
to us on the shady bridge over the brook. 

The same method of composition 
applies, almost necessarily, to all sorts 
of landscape work, especially to informal 
undertakings. Will we design an informal 
border of hardy herbaceous plants? If 
there is any logical order at all to the 
composition we shall find it dividing easily 
into nodes and internodes. Every row of 

168 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

street trees presents a well-marked rhythm 
like that of martial music. 

It is not to be assumed that this prin- 
ciple^-or any of these principles — was 
explicitly formulated by Olmsted himself. 
Olmsted was too great an artist to operate 
upon any formula. The idea was first 
pointed out to me by my friend Mr. George 
A. Parker, who by acquaintance with 
Olmsted, by broad knowledge of his work, 
and by deep sympathy with everything 
artistic, is peculiarly justified in suggesting 
such a generalization. 

Calvert Vaux was born and trained in 
London. He came to America in 1848, 
and in this country his life's work was 
done. He was commonly considered by 
his contemporaries to be the ablest land- 
scape architect in America, this being 
before Olmsted's commanding genius was 
recognized. Vaux furnished, in more than 
one sense, the connecting bond between 
Downing and Olmsted. He was first the 
business partner of the former, and after- 
ward of the latter. The partnership 
between Olmsted and Vaux was in many 
respects fortunate. Olmsted had breadth 
of view, originality and a practical sympa- 

169 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

thy for the outdoor world in its largest 
aspects. Vaux had the technical skill of 
the trained architect and a knowledge of 
European practice. In the various works 
executed by this firm, as notably in Central 
Park, many of the most pleasing details 
were of Vaux's suggestion and design, 
while the unity of the scheme considered 
all together was due to Olmsted's broader 
vision. It is an easy inference that, during 
the period of this partnership, Olmsted 
learned a great deal from Vaux in the way 
of technical method which stood him in 
good service in his later work. 

The work of Charles Eliot is easier to 
judge than that of any other American 
landscape gardener. This is due to various 
reasons, — (i) to its comparative and 
lamentable brevity, (2) to its simplicity 
and consistency, and (3), most of all, to 
the completeness with which it is set forth 
in the magnificent memoir by his father. 
We may say briefly of his work that it 
follows the Olmstedian methods already 
outlined, that he showed a great fondness 
for natural scenery, superior perhaps even 
to that of Olmsted himself, and that he 
was a leader in America in the projection 

170 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

of large improvement schemes involving 
wide districts. The Metropolitan Park 
system in the vicinity of Boston was the 
first of its kind in this country, and is to 
be rated as Eliot's masterpiece. 

The greatest, most significant and most 
important development of landscape archi- 
tecture in America in our own day is 
presented in the work of civic improve- 
ment, as it is now commonly called. 
Though Eliot is frequently named as the 
pioneer in this field, the work is being 
done now on a large scale, in many places, 
by many landscape architects, and with a 
technical proficiency and success which 
would surely have surprised and delighted 
Eliot. As examples may be mentioned Mr. 
Warren Manning's work at Harrisburg; 
Mr. John Nolen's designs for San Diego, 
Cal., and Roanoke, Va., Mr. Charles Mul- 
ford Robinson's plans for Honolulu, and 
the plans of Mr. F. L. Olmsted, Jr., for 
Detroit; also the reports of Mr. Harlan P. 
Kelsey on Columbia and Greenville, S. C, 
and especially the magnificent new plans for 
Chicago, by Mr. Daniel H. Burnham. 

Literary and dramatic criticism give 
their best service when applied to the work 

171 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

of men still living. In pursuance of our 
determination to apply similar methods to 
landscape art, we ought now to say some- 
thing of the work of contemporary land- 
scape architects. The difficulties of such 
an undertaking are only too manifest, and 
have already been enumerated. From 
recent and somewhat extended correspond- 
ence with the best judges, however, I beg 
permission to sketch a few general 
observations. 

A considerable majority of these 
correspondents place Mr. Warren H. Man- 
ning and the Olmsted Brothers at the top 
of the list of practising landscape archi- 
tects. 

Mr. Manning, who worked for some 
time with the elder Olmsted, is mentioned 
by many as the best representative of 
that master's methods. He is particularly 
strong in his knowledge of native flora over 
a large part of the continent, and in his 
ability to bring this flora into effective 
use. His methods are particularly adapted 
to large rural places, and there is some 
suggestion that on small city places he is 
less successful, owing to this use of too 
broad a style. 

172 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

The firm of Olmsted Brothers is 
generally praised for its efficient business 
organization, making it possible to turn 
out a large amount of work of uniform 
excellence. Mr. John C. Olmsted is said to 
be strong on the organization and adminis- 
tration of parks and municipal projects 
generally. Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, 
Jr., is credited with unusual artistic gifts. 
Mr. Percival Gallagher, a member of the 
same firm, is mentioned by those who know 
him as a young man of special promise. 

Various accidents of circumstance 
have combined to place Mr. Charles A. 
Piatt in the nominal leadership of the 
American exponents of the Italian style. 
Mr. Piatt is, first of all, an architect (as, 
in fact, are nearly all the devotees of the 
Italian style), and lays no claim to a 
knowledge of gardening. However, he has 
designed a number of small places with 
distinguished success. The Larz Andersen 
Garden at Brookline, Mass., is the most 
noted example of his work, but some of 
the smaller things which he has done at 
Cornish, N. H., are said to be even better. 

Mr. O. C. Simonds, of Chicago, made 
his reputation as designer and superintend- 

173 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

ent of Graceland Cemetery. He has since 
then designed other rural cemeteries, and 
his name will always be especially asso- 
ciated with this sort of work. His work 
seems to be characterized by roads of 
broad and dignified sweep, and by plantings 
of large and orderly naturalistic masses 
conforming admirably to the contour of 
the land on which they are placed. 

Mr. Jens Jensen, of Chicago, appeals to 
my own judgment as one of the ablest men 
of the hour. He has the advantage of 
unusual artistic and technical training, and 
an intimate acquaintance with the best 
European models. His work is interesting, 
original, novel, breaking clear away from 
the formulas now familiar in America, 
though resembling more the modern work 
in Germany. His work on the West Park 
System in Chicago presents many notable 
features. 

Many other landscape architects are 
mentioned with praise. Those most fre- 
quently named by correspondents are 
Messrs. Chas. N. Lowrie, H. P. Kelsey, 
Geo. Kessler, E. W. Bowditch and 
Frederick G. Todd. But their work is not 
sufficiently known to the present writer, 

174 



ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 

nor to his correspondents, who are willing 
to express any opinion of it, so that it may 
be characterized in any manner at the 
present time. 

It is generally recognized that a great 
deal is done for the art of landscape gar- 
dening by those who are not professionally 
engaged in designing. The park superin- 
tendents especially have much to do with 
the progress of the art. In their number 
Messrs. J. A. Pettigrew, of Boston; George 
A. Parker, of Hartford, and Theodore 
Wirth, of Minneapolis, are recognized as 
men of eminent abilities. Prof. L. H. 
Bailey has done much through his writings 
to popularize sound principles of good taste 
in private gardening. In the same way 
much was accomplished through the able 
and courageous preaching of the late W. A. 
Stiles, of Prof. C. S. Sargent, and that 
group of enthusiasts who found a pleasant 
and inspiring exchange for ten years in 
the weekly issues of "Garden and Forest." 



175 



ESSAY NUMBER ELEVEN 

On American Masterpieces 
of Landscape Architecture 



/ am sitting on a moss^ log tvith an open 
book on ml; ^nee. At my feet a Utile spring puts 
forth its trickling runnel. The well is clear and 
strong, a voice of nature which sa})s, "Sound, 
sound, rise and flow on." Water is not aware of 
the academies and the ohsoletes; possibly this is 
why its noise is so charming in these cool places of 
the woods. Overhead the crowded, dusky leaves 
shake with a sound of multitudinous ki^^i^g* ond 
one trim wood-thrush goes like a shadow through 
the bosket yonder, piping a liquid, haunting 
phrase, which wavers between the extremes of joy 
and pain. There is just enough light to read 
Keats by — the light of neither sea nor land, 
the soft crepuscule of a thick forest. 

Maurice Thompson, 

"My Winter Garden" 



179 



ON AMERICAN MASTERPIECES OF 
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE 

^^HE uninitiated person hearing of mas- 
^^ terpieces easily forms the idea that 

there is something complete and final 
about each one. The very word "master- 
piece" has a big, sonorous and conclusive 
sound. However, when the critic comes to 
close quarters with any of the renowned 
works he finds that they are not without 
defects. Even the most masterful of the 
masterpieces, in literature, music or painting, 
is only a little way in advance of its com- 
petitors. Or, to state the matter differently, 
there is no such thing as perfection or 
finality in the works of human art. 

In the field of landscape architecture 
there are special difficulties which have al- 
ready been hinted at. A piece of work may be 
left to-day in the very best condition which 
the landscape architect's skill can give it, and 
yet five years from to-day, through neglect 
or abuse, it may be worthless. An artistic 

181 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

effect once achieved in landscape gardening 
will not stay fixed. The long time required 
to secure results in the best sorts of land- 
scape work also brings in difficulties. The 
situation becomes particularly awkward 
when, through the lapse of time, several 
different landscape gardeners are employed 
successively on the same piece of work. 
Many of the best things that have been done 
have been necessarily managed in this way, 
and in such instances it is a puzzle to decide 
whether one man or another should have 
the praise for achievement or the blame for 
failure. 

Yet, in spite of difficulties, it seems wise 
and proper to classify some works of art as 
masterpieces, whether in literature, painting 
or landscape architecture. It is always good 
to recognize merit. It is always worth while 
to give large attention to the best things. 
Every masterpiece becomes a standard by 
which other work is measured. It becomes 
an example all workers may emulate. It 
marks the goal toward which every am- 
bitious artist presses forward. As we seek 
to promote better work in landscape archi- 
tecture, particularly by setting up higher 
standards, we should improve every oppor- 

182 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 



tunity to call attention to the best works in 
this art also. 

It will be recognized, of course, that the 
selection of any particular works of art for 
pre-eminent recognition is a matter of per- 
sonal opinion. If the opinion of a large 
number of well-trained men can be se- 
cured, and if they agree to any extent, 
such a consensus of opinion has a special 
value. But we have not gone so far in 
landscape gardening, and it will apparently 
be some time before we can. The opinions 
of specific works which follow are entirely 
my own and must be recorded as partial 
and tentative. 

The comparisons made in such opinions, 
moreover, must not appear to be invidious. 
Doubtless, some excellent works of land- 
scape architecture have not been mentioned 
in the following list. In fact, it will be easy 
to find other works which are undoubtedly 
better than some of those here mentioned. 
The list, in fact, has been made up simply 
with a view to have it broadly represen- 
tative of American landscape art. It seems 
to me eminently important that my 
students, as they are being introduced to 
the study of landscape gardening, should 

183 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

have set before them a number of typical 
works which, if not strictly masterpieces, 
are recognized as of high merit. 

Some of the masterpieces which I have 
included in my list are important on ac- 
count of their historical significance. 
Circumstances have conspired to give them 
special influence. This is the case, for 
instance, with Central Park, New York. 
The park itself is by no means the best 
one in the country, and the original design 
is by no means the best work of its author. 
Nevertheless, the making of Central Park 
marks an epoch in American landscape 
architecture. It was the beginning of the 
great city park systems which to-day supply 
the most magnificent examples of the value 
and beauty to be achieved in the successful 
practice of this art. 

Number One. Therefore, let Central 
Park, New York City, stand as the first 
masterpiece of American landscape archi- 
tecture. The idea of this park was broached 
by Andrew Jackson Downing, and Down- 
ing lived long enough to see the beginning 
of its realization. The original design 
was the first important work of Frederick 
Law Olmsted, Sr., and it is quite within 

184 




2 "^ 

< ^ 

O ■= 

S ^ 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 



the facts lo s;jy th;it. this piece of work 
opened to him his (:rir(:(;T an a landscape 
gardener. Whatever thin opportunity may 
have made of the land between 5rjth Street 
and Croton Reservoir, it made a world- 
renowned landscape architect of Olmsted. 
This in itself mi^/ht entitle the project to 
rank as a masterpiece. 

Yet, with all its defects, Central Park 
has many good qualities. Aftc-r all deduc- 
tions have been made, it is still a rural 
park. It brin^/s the important qualities and 
some of the sentiment of wild nature into 
the center of the most sophisticated city in 
America. Moreover, it is actually one of 
the most useful of parks. Probably more 
people see it in a year than any other piece 
of park property in America, — perhaps in 
the v/orld. For a lar^/e majority of these 
people, Central Park meets a vtry urgent 
need. It is more than recreation to them, — 
it is help and even health or life itself. 

Every student of landscape architecture 
ought carefully to consider Central Park. 
He ou^<ht to consider the conditions under 
which it has been made. These conditions 
are typical, even v/hen most depressing. 
The student ought to consider the principle 

185 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

on which a large rural park was established 
in the center of a great commercial city. 
He ought to consider why curved roads 
were built on varying levels, why bridle 
paths were introduced, why open lawns and 
sheets of water were provided, and why 
great irregular masses of trees were cul- 
tivated. There are many things in Central 
Park worth study besides the social 
problems there exposed to view. 

Number Two. The World's Fair 
grounds at Chicago in 1893 presented a 
picture which America will never forget. 
This was probably the most influential 
piece of landscape architecture ever de- 
veloped on this continent. In spite of its 
short life, it was viewed by hundreds of 
thousands of people from all parts of the 
continent, and these were precisely the 
people most able to bear the influence of 
such work into their own communities. 
Besides all that, the country was ready for 
an artistic awakening. America was 
thoroughly sick of the disgusting archi- 
tecture which had prevailed since the Civil 
War. The country had been undergoing 
an era of despondency, bordering on in- 
sanity, in every form of practical art. Home 

186 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 



furnishings, men's and women's dress, and 
every other form of every-day art had 
sunk to the lowest possible level. The 
country was beginning to accumulate 
wealth and needed only a new leadership 
in matters of taste. Under such circum- 
stances, the architecture and gardening of 
the World's Fair grounds proved a revela- 
tion to thousands of persons. These men 
and women went home inspired with new 
ideas of beautiful things and with a de- 
termination to make their own homes more 
orderly and artistic, their own grounds 
more beautiful, and to give their home 
towns and cities something of the grandeur 
and magnificence of the White City beside 
Lake Michigan. 

The design in itself was a good one. 
It was well adapted to the flat land on 
which it was built. It was convenient for 
the purposes of the Exposition. It showed 
what could be done in the massing and 
harmonization of architecture. It showed 
how this could be accomplished in such a 
large way as to amount to landscape 
making. The great Court of Honor, sur- 
rounded by its beautiful white buildings, 
with Macmonnies' fountain at one end and 



187 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the statue of the Republic at the other, told 
thousands of people for the first time in 
their lives what were the possibilities of 
the architectural style of landscape art. 

Presently the visitor crossed a beautiful 
arched bridge at one side. Probably the 
visitor had never seen a beautiful bridge 
before, having known only the most vulgar 
iron truss work or the shabbiest wooden 
bridges. At the other end of this bridge 
he found himself in a pleasant wild garden. 
The path ran through shady trees, it fol- 
lowed the rushy border of the lagoon, it 
hid behind masses of shrubbery, it took him 
by a few steps quite out of sight of the 
gorgeous White City. He understood with 
wonder that this Wooded Island, with all 
its trees and shrubs and its encircling 
lagoon, had all been lately made; and he 
felt that this, indeed, was landscape garden- 
ing. Thus the two great styles of landscape 
architecture were most emphatically im- 
pressed upon the knowledge of the 
American people at the precise moment 
when they were most ready to respond. 
Works of greater artistic merit will often 
be produced hereafter in America, but 
works of greater influence, never. 

188 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

The design of the World's Fair 
grounds was largely due to Frederick Law 
Olmsted, Sr. Several other men helped. 
Mr. Daniel H. Burnham was largely re- 
sponsible for the architecture and archi- 
tectural effects in the landscape ensemble. 
The result, as a whole, is most emphatically 
entitled to stand as one of the great master- 
pieces of American landscape architecture. 

Number Three. Mount Royal, Montreal, 
is a beautiful mountain. It rises to a height 
of 740 feet from a broad, level plain. It 
stands beside an incomparable river and 
looks down on a busy, modern, picturesque 
city. It is a most unusual combination. 

As a piece of landscape gardening, Mount 
Royal presents the effect of a remarkable 
piece of natural scenery most effectively 
and unaccountably let alone. It was a 
masterly conception of Frederick Law Olm- 
sted, in the first instance, that the place 
should be left in its natural character. For 
this plan he labored with pain and disap- 
pointment as though he were shedding his 
very life blood for a result always to be 
withheld. And yet, circumstances have co- 
operated to maintain his design. Or, if 
his design has not been actually developed, 

189 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

it has at least not yet been frustrated. A city 
government, which might easily have ruined 
the aesthetic value of the whole magnificent 
mountain, has fortunately let it alone. 
There it stands. Upon its top and slopes 
there are still to be found most of the 
native species of trees. The drives and 
paths wind along the slopes in a natural 
and unconventional manner. And from 
Observation Point the visitor still looks out 
up the river over the rapids, down the river 
to a far, hazy horizon, across to the east 
where Mount St. Hilaire and Rougemont rise 
out of the level, fertile plain, while down 
below spreads the busy city. It is the 
most inspiring outlook on the continent of 
North America. It is the climax of Mount 
Royal Park. 

Number Four. In Franklin Park, 
Boston, Olmsted seems to have realized 
the great opportunity of his life. Every- 
thing considered, this is perhaps his great- 
est work. He enjoyed here, to some extent 
at least, what he did not find in Montreal, — 
the sympathetic appreciation and encour- 
agement of those with whom he labored. 
The native landscape, moreover, while much 
less spectacular than Mount Royal, was par- 

190 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

ticularly clear to him. It was his home 
landscape. It was native. These were the 
great qualities in all landscape in his belief, 
and these were the qualities which he 
wished to realize in his best landscape 
gardening. Good fortune attended the en- 
terprise in another very important respect: 
the work was carried out with reasonable 
fidelity, with reasonable appropriations of 
money. There have been some changes 
from the original design, and some of 
which, in my opinion, are not improve- 
ments; but, on the whole, Franklin Park 
comes as near being a concrete realization 
of a landscape architect's ideas as can often 
be found. 

The park is conveniently located for 
one of its size and purpose; it is adequate 
in size; it contains a considerable diversity 
of scenery; it has various sections well 
suited to the various purposes of such a 
park; it abounds in pleasing pictorial views 
of natural scenery; and most of all has a 
quiet, restful, rural charm which is the 
very essence of Olmsted's ideal. 

Number Five. I have already named 
four masterpieces, all of them by Frederick 
Law Olmsted, Sr. I cannot conclude the 

191 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

list, however, without one more. The 
Muddy Brook Parkway, extending from the 
aristocratic Back Bay section of Boston 
out into Jamaica Plain and having its 
terminus in Olmsted Park, presents a piece 
of landscape gardening smaller in size and 
less important than any of the undertakings 
already mentioned. Nevertheless, it is the 
opinion of many good critics that this par- 
ticular territory includes the most success- 
ful work ever done by the great Olmsted. 
Here are small but almost perfect natural- 
istic pictures succeeding upon one another 
in a veritable panorama. These pictures 
are usually well composed. In fact, as a 
piece of pictorial composition. Muddy Brook 
Park has no superior among American 
works of landscape architecture done in 
the natural style. It should be remembered, 
in weighing the value of this result, that 
such pictorial composition is precisely 
what the natural style aims at, and pre- 
cisely what it so frequently fails to accom- 
plish. Those who doubt the practicability 
of landscape composition in the natural 
style should visit Muddy Brook Park. 

Number Six. Graceland Cemetery, 
Chicago, classifies artistically with the 

192 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

works of Olmsted. The technical ideas 
which have prevailed are the same. While 
Mr. O. C. Simonds has always been a 
highly independent worker, and while his 
ideas have been developed largely by him- 
self, he has still been influenced to a con- 
siderable extent by the work of the elder 
Olmsted. Nevertheless, Graceland Ceme- 
tery is peculiarly his own enterprise. In 
its present form, he may be said to have 
established it. He not only designed but 
constructed it. There is hardly a piece of 
work to be found anywhere in the United 
States which is more directly and com- 
pletely the personal product of one man's 
labors. 

Graceland Cemetery presented a num- 
ber of technical difficulties. The chief of 
these was the low, fiat, swampy land on 
which it was built, and which was totally 
unadapted, in its original state, to the pur- 
poses for which it was set apart. There 
was very little natural growth of trees or 
shrubbery on the ground, and the climate 
was unfavorable to such growth. These 
difficulties stood largely in the way of suc- 
cess in the natural style of gardening, the 
style adopted for Graceland. 

193 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Considerable areas of Graceland to-day 
present the stone-yard and junk-shop ap- 
pearance of the usual cemetery. These 
sections need not be considered in the 
artistic scheme. They are certainly not 
part of Mr. Simonds' design. The eastern 
section of the present cemetery, however, 
has been developed and retained fairly 
within the ideal set by the designer. It 
has been kept practically clean of archi- 
tecture, stone masonry and other mortuary 
gewgaws, and also of canna beds, coleus 
borders and the other usual vulgarities. It 
contains a broad, quiet stretch of lake, 
heavily bordered by luxuriant plantings of 
shrubbery and comfortable trees. Here and 
there are quiet stretches of unbroken lawn. 
From many points there develop strongly 
composed pictures of quiet, restful, rural 
scenery. The feeling of peace, quietude 
and rest which ought to characterize a 
cemetery is here realized as fully as the art 
of landscape gardening can realize it. 

Graceland Cemetery has enjoyed the 
distinction of being one of the most suc- 
cessful of landscape cemeteries in America 
and so has exerted a large influence on 
other projects of a similar sort. 

194 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

Number Seven. The Metropolitan 
Park Reservation of Boston is one of the 
most complete and satisfactory to be found 
in America. In fact, it compares favorably 
with work of the same sort in the best cities 
of Europe. The project is largely due to 
one man, the late Charles Eliot. While 
not very much has been done in the de- 
velopment of this region, aside from making 
some roads and parkways, the main pur- 
pose was accomplished when the tracts 
were selected, surveyed and reserved. To 
a considerable extent, therefore, Eliot saw 
his project completed. Perhaps he saw 
it as near its actual completion as the land- 
scape architect usually sees his work. 

The value of the Metropolitan Park 
Reservation of Boston, considered as a 
work of landscape architecture, consists 
first in its realization of the landscape 
needs of a great community. These needs 
are served for the present and safeguarded 
for the future in a large and practical way. 

The second merit of this reservation 
system is shown in the excellent judgment 
with which the various tracts were selected. 
The different areas represent all the differ- 
ent kinds of natural scenery available in 

195 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

eastern Massachusetts. A greater variety 
of beautiful landscape is presented than any 
ordinary person would have thought existed 
within driving distance of Beacon Hill. 

The third point in which Eliot showed 
his professional skill lay in securing the 
purchase and reservation of these areas 
with a practical system for their manage- 
ment in perpetuity. He was able to present 
to the community, and to various influential 
sections of it, his projects with unusual 
force and persuasiveness. This sort of 
talent is sometimes lacking among land- 
scape architects, but it is a professional 
equipment of the greatest value. 

Number Eight. Keney Park, Hartford, 
has many of the characteristics of Franklin 
Park. It is a large rural park designed in 
the extreme of the natural style. The 
original layout was at the hands of the late 
Charles Eliot. Subsequent developments 
have been designed by Olmsted Brothers, 
particularly by Mr. John C. Olmsted, while 
much of the present charm and interest of 
the park is due to the sympathetic con- 
structive work of the superintendent, Mr. 
George A. Parker. While this park is, 
therefore, not to be rated as the product 

196 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

of any one man's genius, it is, nevertheless, 
a masterpiece of American landscape 
gardening. As such, it should be studied 
by everyone interested in the art. 

Number Nine. The city of Chicago 
has become famous in America for its park 
systems. It was the first large city in this 
country to reserve and organize a com- 
prehensive system of urban parks. Its lead 
in this field is still maintained. There are 
large numbers of parks and playgrounds 
in all parts of the city, and these are every- 
where connected by pleasant drives and 
broad boulevards with well-designed park- 
ings. Some of the landscape architecture 
in the various parks would hardly be ac- 
cepted as of the masterpiece order, yet 
the system as a whole is entirely com- 
mendable. 

During the last few years there has 
been unusual activity in the construction 
of new parks and playgrounds, and in the 
improvement of the old parks, in Chicago. 
Nowhere else has there been so much 
progressive construction work. Not all of 
this work has been good, but much of it 
has been excellent. 

In that group of parks administered 

197 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

as the West Park System, there have been 
accomplished in late years the most strik- 
ing and successful examples of park design 
which it has been my good fortune to see 
in America or Europe. This work has been 
done directly by the superintendent of this 
system of parks, Mr. Jens Jensen. In this 
case, a man of superior training and marked 
artistic abilities found the means to accom- 
plish concrete results. Large enterprises 
were undertaken. Old parks were re- 
modeled and new ones built on entirely 
new lines. 

I find in this recent work of Mr. Jensen 
something new, something difficult to 
analyze and classify. The work is filled 
with fresh ideas and breaks away freely 
from the old conventions. One can hardly 
say that the work is done in the archi- 
tectural style, nor that it is done in the 
natural style. We have something here 
very, very different from what has hitherto 
been seen in either of these styles, yet it 
conforms to the best characters of both. 
It contains some of the elements of Jap- 
anese art, some of the best ideas of modern 
German art, and some elements which it 
is hard to classify. To me it seems to 

198 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

represent the principles of the "art noveau" 
as applied to landscape architecture. Many 
of the architectural constructions and em- 
bellishments certainly adopt this color. 
Mr. Jensen himself says that he has re- 
ceived his chief inspiration from the Zuni 
Indians and from the flat, level prairies 
with their wide, straight horizon lines. 
This work of Mr. Jensen certainly stands 
as the most fresh and modern thing in 
American landscape architecture. 

Number Ten. One of the most char- 
acteristic developments of landscape archi- 
tecture in America during the last decade 
has been that of city building. Suddenly 
it has come to be recognized that a city is 
not a fortuitous aggregation of ugly objects, 
noisome smells and unpleasant noises. It 
may just as well be an orderly arrangement 
of things which are beautiful in themselves, 
and capable of still greater beauty when 
harmoniously arranged. Many enterprises 
in city improvement are now under way, 
and one or two of these should be men- 
tioned amongst American masterpieces, 
in spite of the fact that no one of them has 
yet reached completion. 

Unquestionably, Washington stands as 

199 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the best of our American cities in point of 
design. This is largely due to the fact that 
it was designed at the start, instead of 
being allowed merely to grow. The work 
of L'Enfant was so well conceived in the 
first place, and so well established at the 
beginning, that it has been proof against 
meddling or neglect. The city of Wash- 
ington has always been rather fortunate 
in all matters connected with its general 
design. Good architects have been em- 
ployed on the public buildings (with a few 
exceptions), and good landscape architects 
have given what help they could on public 
grounds. Andrew Jackson Downing in 
his day did a good work in Washington, 
and the White House grounds have never 
been debauched by bad and expensive 
gardening. 

In recent years Washington has taken 
up anew the whole business of civic im- 
provement and has employed in its behalf 
many of the best architects and landscape 
gardeners of America. While it is not 
possible here to analyze this work, to point 
out its best accomplishments or its weak- 
nesses, we may well accept Washington 
as the American model of city building. 

200 



AMERICAN MASTERPIECES 

Number Eleven. One other example 
of city design should be given, and for this 
purpose I choose Harrisburg, Pa. Here 
there has been a comprehensive design 
prepared by one man, so that Mr. Warren 
Manning may be credited with this par- 
ticular masterpiece. Here a city of moder- 
ate size, favorably situated and enjoying a 
very attractive topography, has been 
handled in a thoroughly workmanlike 
manner. The designs provide for the 
probable development of the city in the 
future, providing not only for its need 
in the way of landscape, but also for many 
practical conveniences. These things take 
into account political and social require- 
ments of the city to a large degree and pro- 
vide for them in a highly satisfactory 
manner. 

There are a great many other pieces 
of work in America that have been thor- 
oughly well done. It would be pleasant 
to describe, analyze or criticise hundreds 
of them. This will not be possible now, and 
doubtless it is not necessary. However, I 
have found it worth while to give my 
students a list of successful works of land- 
scape architecture for their further study 

201 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

and consideration, just as a teacher of 
literature recommends a list of good books 
for his pupils to read after their class- 
room work is completed. In such a list I 
naturally include chiefly those things which 
I have myself seen and enjoyed, or of which 
I have some specific knowledge. Such a 
list must be very partial, and even faulty, 
much more so than the list of books recom- 
mended by the teacher of literature. 

In such a list I would include Wash- 
ington Park, Chicago, by Frederick Law 
Olmsted, Sr. ; the recent parks and park- 
ways of Kansas City, Mo., by Mr. George 
Kessler; the new park system at Seattle, 
Wash., by Olmsted Brothers; the Larz 
Andersen garden at Brookline, Mass., 
by Mr. Charles A. Piatt; Maxwell Court, 
Rockville, Conn., by Mr. Piatt; dozens, — 
even hundreds, — of good private places by 
Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., Carrere & Hastings, 
Mr. Warren H. Manning, and others; and 
among city designs (most of them still 
undeveloped), Mr. John Nolen's plans for 
San Diego, Mr. Charles Mulford Robinson*s 
study of Jamestown, N. Y., and Mr. H. P. 
Kelsey*s plans for Columbia, S. C. 



202 



ESSAY NUMBER TWELVE 

On the Improvement of the 
Open Country 



There is a beauty of the lil\) and a beaut}) of 
the pine, a beaut}) of the mountain and a beauty 
of the plain, a beauty of wide outlooks, of stately 
high-Tvalled amphitheaters, and of gentle sequestered 
corners. One l^ind necessarily excludes the other 
kinds; but that does not matter if each arrests 
the eye, interests the mind, and appeals to the 
imagination and the heart. 

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, 

"Art Out-of-Doors" 



/ lead no man to a dinner-table, 

library, exchange. 
But each man and each Tvoman 

of you I lead upon a knoll. 
My left hand hooding you about 

the Tvaist, 
My right hand pointing to 

landscapes of continents and 

the public road. 

Walt Whitman, 

"Song of Myself" 



205 



ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE 
OPEN COUNTRY 

CIVIC art has won a place with archi- 
tecture and music. It is a branch 
of landscape architecture dealing 
with the making of cities. The civic artist 
gives his services to build new cities on 
proper lines or to remodel old cities. His 
effort is to secure the greatest amount of 
beauty along with the best sanitary, moral 
and business conditions. 

It is a great mistake to limit the opera- 
tion of this art to the cities. Civics, citizen- 
ship, and civic art belong also to the 
villages and to the open country. 

Village improvement, to be sure, does 
carry this art into the villages. Village 
improvement is a movement which has the 
same ends in view, and it comes to have 
a different name only because a different 
organization is demanded to accomplish 
results in smaller communities. 

But to-day I want to say a word for 

207 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the open country, — the regions that God 
made. (You remember the saying that 
God made the country, but man made the 
city.) Neither civic artist nor rural im- 
provement society has yet undertaken to 
bring the country any help. So far as I 
know, the affair has not been seriously 
discussed, and probably most persons 
assume that the country cannot be im- 
proved. 

It will appear, however, even on a 
brief consideration, that the same principles 
which are being so beneficently worked 
out in the building of modern cities and 
the improvement of prosperous towns will 
apply with equal effect to the enrichment 
of the rural districts. This essay under- 
takes only to carry out the comparison. 

In city planning we hear a great deal 
about civic centers. The villages and towns 
are the natural, though inevitable, civic 
centers of the country-side; and if village 
improvement will make of them all they 
ought to be, then rural improvement begins 
with one problem solved and may pass at 
once to others. 

Every country district ought to be 
reasonably accessible. There should be 

208 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

some way of getting into it. I know a 
New England town of rare delights, — one 
of the most beautiful in America, — which 
is almost unknown to the world because 
it is so hard to get there. It is truly harder 
to reach than the drawing-room of the 
most select house on Beacon Street, and 
fewer there be that find it. The town has 
no trolley and no railway, and the three 
wagon roads are so steep and bad that 
automobiles and loads of wood prefer to 
go somewhere else. It has been understood 
for years that this town needs connection 
with the outside world, but the citizens are 
poor and discouraged and the improvement 
has not come. 

Every country district, of course, needs 
good roads. The foundation of every 
improvement is economic; and good roads 
are the foundation of every economic ad- 
vance. The value of good roads is so 
manifest and so universally accepted that 
it is not denied even by the professional 
watchdog in town meetings. The man 
who annually opposes the voting of money 
for schools and libraries, says nothing 
against the improvement of roads. What 
rural improvement must aim at, then, is 

209 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

to get the work done more intelligently 
and effectively. 

It is well known that much of the 
money spent on road improvement in the 
country is wasted. This is partly because 
of neighborhood jealousies and cross-roads 
graft, but largely through plain, honest 
ignorance. It is hardly to be expected 
that every road overseer in a country town 
will be a graduate engineer with up-to-date 
knowledge of Macadam, Telford and 
Tarvia. Those states, therefore, which 
have county road overseers, or state high- 
way commissions with good engineers at 
public service, are in the position to get 
the best roads. Every effort ought to be 
made to place the services of these experts 
within reach of the country neighborhoods 
where road appropriations, always pitiably 
small, most need to be economized. 
Country roads ought to be better built, 
and any scheme which will build them 
better is to be encouraged. 

Very many country roads not only 
need to be rebuilt, but they ought to be 
entirely relocated. Present locations were 
usually determined many years ago, at the 
time the country was first settled. Com- 

210 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

monly roads were placed along farm 
boundaries, not because that was the best 
location, but because it was customary, 
and at the time it made little difference. 
There is probably not a town in New York 
state or New England in which consider- 
able portions of the main roads could not 
be relocated to advantage. Any intelligent 
man could sit down with a map of the town 
spread on the kitchen table and do it after 
supper. More direct routes could be found 
between important points, steep hills 
avoided, swamps and sandy stretches left 
to one side. 

In most places there is absolutely 
nothing to interfere with such radical and 
far-reaching improvements. Land is cheap, 
and condemnation proceedings are easy. 
In many instances, the owners would be 
glad to give the land. 

Thus far I have spoken chiefly of the 
North Atlantic states, where land is hilly 
and roads crooked. The complacent 
dwellers on the flat interior prairies, with 
their checkerboard section-line highways, 
often imagine that their system is beyond 
improvement. This is where they are worse 
off than the New Englander, who knows 

211 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

that his roads are imperfect. The most 
thoroughly inconvenient system possible is 
the rectangular layout, whether applied 
to cities or to farming districts. City 
builders have learned this and are trying 
to bring city plans more to the style of 
Washington and Paris. 

It would be a very great practical 
benefit to McPherson, Kan., for example, 
if a good public thoroughfare could be 
established running 15 miles directly 
northwest from the town. If, then, with 
slight deviations to avoid rough land, it 
could be continued straight to the village 
of Marquette, so much the better. A 
similar diagonal road could be run to the 
southeast of the city, another to the north- 
east, and another to the southwest, with 
equally good effect. For twenty years I 
lived four miles north and four miles west 
of McPherson. We called it eight miles to 
town, and traveled the distance without 
complaint three times a week. As a matter 
of fact, we were less than six miles from 
town as the bee flies and were wasting five 
miles of hard work every trip. I figure that 
at five miles a trip, three trips a week, for 
twenty years, I traveled over 15,000 highly 

212 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

unnecessary miles, and the thought of it 
disgusts me so I would like to go back 
now and sue the county for damages. 

Just consider that there are loo busy, 
hard-working people to-day in that same 
neighborhood, going to McPherson, say, 
twice a week the year round. There are 
12,000 miles of travel wasted every year 
by just those few men and women of that 
neighborhood. Was such economic waste 
ever tolerated in anything else? Yet there 
are thousands and thousands of cities and 
towns in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, 
Iowa, Missouri and adjoining states where 
no diagonal highways exist or were ever 
thought of. Surely rural improvement 
finds it easy at this point to propose some- 
thing better. 

Something may properly be said here 
for roadside planting. It is not practicable 
to have every street lined with trees along 
every rod of its length. There are stretches 
which, from various considerations, ought 
to be left open. But probably more than 
half the mileage in ordinary sections would 
be improved if suitably planted with trees. 
Everyone knows how great a pleasure it is 
to find a country road shaded by over- 

213 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

arching elms, or by giant maples, or even 
by upstart cottonwoods. 

Such tree planting in rural districts 
has always been left to the pride of 
abutting landowners. But the benefit 
accrues chiefly to the public, and the public 
ought to direct the enterprise and pay the 
bills. The public owns the streets and has 
the right to say what shall grow in them. 
Certainly nothing better can be grown than 
useful and beautiful trees. 

In some parts of Europe the public 
routes are planted with fruit trees. The 
usual custom is to put the fruit up at 
auction and sell it on the trees to the best 
bidder. European travelers occasionally 
recommend this custom for use in America, 
but it is doubtful if it would succeed any- 
where in this free country. Still, apple- 
trees or cherry-trees are sufficiently 
beautiful and sufficiently appropriate to 
country roads to find occasional use even 
in the land of the free and the home of the 
fruit thief. Anyone who has seen the 
highways of the Annapolis Valley in Nova 
Scotia, with their flankings of magnificent 
apple-trees, will allow that they are quite 
as beautiful as elms or willows. 

214 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

Any intelligent layout of country roads 
should consider the different purposes to 
which different roads are put. One is a 
heavy-traffic thoroughfare for loaded 
wagons and automobiles. It must have 
direct lines, easy grades, and well-made 
roadbeds. Another is a farm road, serving 
only one or two small back homesteads. 
It requires less attention. Still other roads 
will be chiefly valuable because they offer 
especially attractive scenery. They border 
on some lake, follow some river, or traverse 
a tract of fine woodland. 

Such scenic roads there are, or ought 
to be, in every country district, and in any 
fair estimate they are just as valuable as 
the traffic roads. It ought to be recognized 
as a public duty to open these up and make 
them popular. Every man knows that the 
most attractive scenery in the world clings 
naturally to the country road. What more 
enjoyable recreation is there than to explore 
mile after mile in a comfortable buggy, on 
bicycle or in a good motor car? 

Omar thought he could attain the 
height of earthly bliss if he had his book 
of verses, "a jug of wine and Thou." 
Evidently he had never taken his best girl 

215 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

of a pleasant Sunday afternoon or evening 
in a good Concord buggy with a safe horse 
to drive mile after mile of shady country 
lane. Such things in the country take the 
place of theaters and amusement parks in 
cities, and are vastly better. They are 
so much better that their value should be 
frankly recognized and their beauties fully 
developed. 

Such scenery drives are not alone for 
youthful lovers. If ever I grow so old as 
not to enjoy a mile of country road with 
the wife of my maturity, I shall know that 
I am ready for the divorce courts and the 
boneyard. 

The preservation of good scenery is 
one of the first duties of rural improvers. 
Every locality has its lake, its river, its 
favorite picnic ground, its high hill with 
wide-sweeping prospect, its grove of noble 
trees, its cave, its gorge, its "devil's garden," 
or its level intervale. Let all such be 
cherished like a woman's honor. They are 
beyond all price. They are usually un- 
marked and uncared for, and are often 
ignorantly and cheaply sacrificed. 

Sometimes there are historic trees to 
be preserved, or historic spots to be marked. 

216 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

One of the most fascinating features of 
that delightful town of Concord, Mass., is 
in its memorials of great men and great 
events. 

The preservation of rural scenery will 
certainly mean the suppression of the bill- 
board nuisance. To see a farm barn flaring 
with a black and yellow coat of paint, roof 
and sides screeching the name of some 
talcum powder or baby poison, all in the 
midst of what should be peaceable and re- 
spectable rural scenery, gives one a shock 
like hearing a man swear in church. And 
when a man prostitutes his barn to such 
hire he puts himself in the same class with 
the woman who sells her character for a 
fee. It is probably easier to stop the 
ravages of the billboard shyster in the 
country than in the city. His profits are 
relatively less and the damage he does 
relatively more. 

All public places in the country, such 
as school grounds and cemeteries, will, of 
course, receive the attention of the rural 
improvement society. We all know how 
often they are neglected, and without 
further argument we are all heartily 
ashamed of it. 

217 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

In order to make any given tract of 
open country appear at its best the in- 
dividual farms must look their jauntiest. 
Quite the most attractive thing in any 
section is to see well-kept farms, with neat 
and comfortable buildings. Improvement 
of this sort is hard to accomplish, but 
substantial progress can be made by efforts 
of the right sort. The thing can be recom- 
mended and talked up. Local pride can 
be aroused. If such an organization as 
the grange takes hold of this thing in a 
naturally progressive neighborhood 
wonders can be accomplished. Some 
country churches could make a great hit 
by laying aside their study of foreign 
missions for a season and preaching farm 
betterment. The foreign missions would 
gain by it in the end. 

The Massachusetts State Board of 
Agriculture offers prizes for the best-kept 
farms in the state. Certain railroads offer 
prizes for the best-looking farms along their 
lines. District and local agricultural 
societies may well copy this pattern, and 
set themselves in all ways to arouse local 
emulation in such matters. 

Rural improvement is altogether a 

218 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

practicable enterprise in prosperous and 
progressive communities. It is coming. 
The rapidly developing love for the country 
and the immigration hither of well-to-do 
and cultured people are bound to bring 
results of this kind. 

For the most part rural improvement 
will follow the lines of village improve- 
ment, already well established. Local 
societies will be formed for the work, or 
the matter will be taken up by societies 
already in existence. Local granges are 
the best of all organizations for the pur- 
pose; but agricultural clubs, woman's clubs, 
country clubs, even churches or whist clubs, 
may serve if they have the leaders. It is 
usually better to have such work taken up 
by some old and well organized society, 
even when it seems a little out of line, 
rather than to waste energy in forming 
some entirely new club. 

Such local societies will properly seek 
the advice of competent landscape architects 
whenever possible. In a few cases the 
services of such experts can be secured by 
private employment and without the inter- 
vention of a society. If I wanted to do 
something for my native town, I would 

219 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

rather open up such a system of betterments 
as we have here considered than to leave a 
five-thousand-dollar drinking fountain, 
with a basin at the foot for thirsty canines, 
and my name cut half an inch deep in the 
marble. 

We hear a great deal just now about 
the conservation of our natural resources, 
meaning coal, lumber and soil fertility. I 
know a dozen towns where the scenery is 
worth more than the agriculture, and a 
thousand where it is worth more than the 
coal and lumber. Take it from the Pacific 
to the Atlantic and I am willing to assert 
that the scenery is worth more than any 
other item except the fertility of the soil. 
It is one of our very greatest natural re- 
sources; and any conservation commission 
which forgets it has not yet waked up to 
business. 

In connection with conservation of 
resources we must have resource surveys. 
Let all such surveys make careful inventory 
of our landscape wealth, and be sure that 
the items receive something like a just 
valuation. 

It would be worth something if a state 
like Massachusetts or Colorado or Cali- 

220 



ON THE OPEN COUNTRY 

fornia would make a full and honest survey 
of landscape assets. Let the work be put 
into the hands of an expert landscape 
architect, just as a survey of coal resources 
would be assigned to a competent mining 
engineer, and the results would be of com- 
parable value. 

On the basis of such a survey a 
competent landscape architect could devise 
improvements for the great advantage of 
the people of the state. State reservations 
of all sorts could be better distributed and 
more successfully placed; the proper routes 
for state roads indicated; public institutions 
made accessible; historic localities re- 
claimed and guarded; neighboring towns 
and municipalities connected, and many 
other improvements for the convenience 
and satisfaction of all citizens suggested 
with the means for their accomplishment. 

Finally, we must not forget that all 
civic improvement must go forward as a 
fairly unified movement. Improvement of 
scenery must be accompanied by improve- 
ment of schools, libraries and churches. 
There must be mental and moral uplift 
along with practical and aesthetic advance. 
Citizenship must be better from center to 

221 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

circumference. And at the basis of all lies 
improvement in economic efficiency. Men 
must get larger returns from their farms 
before they can support better schools, and 
they must have more education before they 
can organize better churches or make 
scenery reservations. It is a complex work, 
but a great and beneficent one, and worth 
the leadership of the best men and women. 



222 



ESSAY NUMBER THIRTEEN 

On the Ownership of 
Scenery 




IN GLOUCESTER HARBOR 

IV tn. T. Knox 



The beauty of Nature is a state resource; it 
deserves to be conserved, and one method of doing 
this — the most available and logical — is by the 
establishment of state parks. It is hoped that the 
action of Massachusetts, Nerv York, arid Wiscon- 
sin, already so well justified by results, Tvill be 
followed by others, until every state in the Union 
has a comprehensive, well-balanced system, embra- 
cing its most valuable and characteristic natural 
scenic resources, set apart forever for the refreshment 
and uplifting of the people. 

Mr. John Nolen 



225 



ON THE OWNERSHIP OF SCENERY 

*V|Vf^ HO owns the earth? God made it 
^^^^ with infinite pains and graciously 
gave it to a needy race, and man- 
kind has been fighting over it pretty much 
ever since the beginning. I think I dis- 
cern a measurable difference of opinion 
among professors of political economy as 
to how that fight ought to be settled. Of 
course, in the past the ownership of the 
earth has nearly always gone to the strong- 
est; and though exceptions seem now to 
be coming in, the rule is far from being 
outlawed. First the patriarchs and then 
the leading tribes controlled what they 
could by physical force; and now the 
nation with the greatest stand of arms 
gets the most land. Manchuria hesitates 
between Russia and Japan, waiting to know 
which has the superior navy. Between 
individual men the division follows the same 
law: the strongest pioneer took the best 
farm, while to-day the best of the forests, 
the coal lands, the rivers and the shores 
belong to those highwaymen admiringly 

227 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

called in our vernacular, "captains of in- 
dustry." 

Yet, even the least thoughtful person 
can see a change coming. It is plain that 
the civilized peoples of the world are 
surely learning to think differently. 
"Public ownership" is a growing idea. It 
is even popular, in spite of earnest (and 
some honest) opposition. To be sure, 
public ownership, in the public mind, means 
ownership of coal mines and street-car 
lines, while, curiously enough, the most 
significant accomplishments are in the 
public ownership of the implements of edu- 
cation and the public ownership of scenery, 
wherein the intuitions of the race and the 
logic of events have outrun the reasoning 
of the professors. It often happens so. 

If there is anything in the big world 
that ought to belong to the public, surely 
it is the landscape. The coal mines and the 
oil fields have to be exploited; and from a 
certain point of view the Standard Oil 
Company and the Coal Trust are practical 
necessities. But the landscape can not be 
exploited; it can only be enjoyed. It can 
not be consumed, though it sometimes is 
destroyed. 

228 



OWNERSHIP OF SCENERY 

And so we began blindly several years 
ago with the Yellowstone National Park, 
and now we have a certain claim on Niagara 
Falls, the Big Trees, and a considerable list 
of national parks. For, though many of 
these tracts have been reserved ostensibly 
for forestry purposes, everyone knows that 
their chief value is their scenic beauty. 
Besides these national reserves, certain of 
the states have established similar invest- 
ments in scenery. Massachusetts, Wis- 
consin and New York have taken a praise- 
worthy leadership in this field, but other 
states are falling into line. No state is so 
poor and mean that it has not some tracts 
of seashore, lake shore, river or forest land 
worth looking at; and if it has such land, 
then the citizens of the state have an 
inalienable right (as the Declaration calls 
it) to enjoy that scenery. 

A few years ago some public-spirited 
men in Massachusetts waked up to an un- 
pleasant discovery. They found that the 
growing wealth and the increasing popula- 
tion of the state were crowding heavily 
upon the ownership of land. Already 
practically the entire shore line where the 
Bay State met the Atlantic Ocean was 

229 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

taken up on private deeds, so that not one 
man in a thousand of the population of 
the state could walk the seashore without 
paying tribute to some friend or speculator. 
In like manner, the woods were closed, the 
hills pre-empted, the brooks owned and 
posted against trespassers, the rivers 
farmed out, and every other form of land- 
scape taken over for private use. Such a 
condition is plainly intolerable; and so 
the public-spirited men who made the dis- 
covery were able to bring public sentiment 
to the point of recovering to public enjoy- 
ment a part of the state's patrimony. 
The results have been gratifying. 

In a certain Vermont town there was 
a great scandal last spring. A leading 
citizen was arrested, put into the town 
calaboose and right soundly fined. His 
crime was beating a boy, not his own. He 
caught the boy trespassing in his garden. 
It appeared in the general explanations 
that the boy was not there stealing straw- 
berries, but that he wanted to go in swim- 
ming. Now, there is a beautiful little river 
running through the town and along the 
foot of the garden owned by the scandalized 
leading citizen, but there is not an inch of 

230 



OWNERSHIP OF SCENERY 

the shore open to the public. A boy who 
would go swimming or fishing simply has 
to trespass upon some leading citizen's 
property, — for, of course, the leading 
citizens have helped themselves to all the 
beautiful shores of the placid little river. 
It happened that just a few weeks before 
this untoward incident I had been employed 
to make a landscape architect's report for 
the improvement of this particular village, 
and in my recommendations I had vehe- 
mently urged the injustice of these private 
holdings. So I sympathized with the boy, 
and felt that the episode justified my plea 
for a public river-front park. 

In a proper public economy we need 
national reservations of scenery, state 
parks, county parks, and, in localities where 
the town is an important administrative 
unit, town parks or public playgrounds. 
The movement for national parks is well 
under way, as is also the acquisition and 
development of city parks. The two rela- 
tively neglected fields are those of the state 
parks and the town or country neighbor- 
hood centers. 

State parks ought to be urged in every 
American state and every Canadian 

231 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

province, and largely for the following 
reasons : 

1. They pay dividends in cash. The 
coming of tourists, campers and vacation- 
ists is a large source of revenue. The little 
state of New Hampshire collects about 
$10,000,000 annually from this source, and 
is yet so short-sighted and niggardly as not 
to invest a dollar in a state reservation in 
the White Mountains. 

2. It pays more in dividends of health. 
All the people of the state need to go camp- 
ing, to take vacations in the open, to go 
periodically back to nature. This oppor- 
tunity they can have only in national or 
state parks. 

3. They may preserve places of his- 
toric interest. 

4. They serve many of the same pur- 
poses as forest reservations, preserving the 
woods, regulating stream flow, etc. 

5. Most of all the state park offers the 
best means of preserving types of native 
landscape, of natural scenery. Have we 

a beautiful mountain? Let us keep it! 
Have we a noble river? We would like to 
visit its banks. Have we a quiet lake? It 
is ours: let us use it. All these resources 

232 




THE RIVER PATH 

C. S. Luitwcilcr 



OWNERSHIP OF SCENERY 

belong to the public, and the public ought 
to have the use of them. They are more 
valuable than Carnegie libraries, for books 
can be replaced. They are more beautiful 
than picture galleries, more elevating than 
churches, more hygienic than hospitals, and 
more enduring than systems of philosophy. 

State parks, then, should be chosen and 
delimited, first, for the types of natural 
landscape beauty which they offer; second, 
for their size, for they ought to be large; 
third, for their availability for campers and 
vacationists. Such selections of sites ought 
to be made only under the advice of expert 
landscape architects; and the scheme of 
management ought to be designed by 
similarly well-trained men. 

In most states the title to such parks 
may rest directly in the commonwealth, and 
this is the sentimentally preferable way. 
In other states there can be established 
special boards of trustees or state park 
commissions, as in Wisconsin. In other 
states the titles to land and the respon- 
sibility for management might vest in 
boards or institutions already established, 
as in a state board of forestry or of agri- 
culture, or in a state imiversity. 

233 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

It is a curious and anomalous develop- 
ment of the present situation that private 
or semi-private corporations should be 
formed to hold valuable tracts of land in 
the public behalf. It is merely an example 
of private philanthropy getting ahead of 
public opinion; or, perhaps it would be 
better to say, getting ahead of the organic 
expression of public opinion, for it is well 
recognized that in such matters our legis- 
lators are not so well informed, so public 
spirited, nor so progressive as the public 
at large. The National Trust in England 
is an example of this sort of private cor- 
poration doing a most excellent work in 
the preservation for public use of places 
of beauty or historic interest, and, in doing 
so, acquiring land titles in the name of 
the trust. Examples in America are the 
Appalachian Club and the American Scenic 
and Historic Preservation Society. 

This method, of course, is better than 
none, but it is objectionable. George Wash- 
ington's old home at Mount Vernon is held 
by a most enterprising and efficient society 
of women; but there is a wide-spread and 
growing feeling that the nation, or at 
least the state, ought to own the place and 

234 



OWNERSHIP OF SCENERY 

open it freely to all pilgrims. People do 
not object to the twenty-five cents ad- 
mission fee, but to the principle; and in 
all such cases sentiment is the safest guide. 

Town parks and playgrounds stand 
on a somewhat different basis, but they 
minister to an even more urgent necessity. 
Boys must play ball. Though this dictum 
is not found in the Scriptures nor in the 
Constitution of the United States, it be- 
longs in both. Also in the Declaration of 
Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the 
Town Charter. Boys must and will play 
ball; and the village which provides no 
ball ground is worse than one which has 
no library and no fire company. I know a 
proud and prosperous town which has made 
a law that boys shall not play ball in the 
streets. At the same time no place is 
offered where they can play. The result is 
perfectly certain. Either they play in the 
streets or they trespass on private grounds, 
in either case getting excellent practice in 
law-breaking. 

But playgrounds are only one thing. 
A second thing that towns ought to do is 
to acquire and protect examples of the 
best native landscape. Every village 

235 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

ought to have — we might fairly say, must 
have — a picnic ground. Otherwise the 
young people will spend their evenings in 
the beer-gardens and their Sundays in the 
"amusement parks." Every village also 
has some spot of historic interest. Such 
places ought to be acquired by the towns 
and maintained by the community, instead 
of waiting for the intercession of the 
Daughters of the Confederacy or of the 
American Revolution. One can not too 
highly praise the work of these societies, 
but at the same time one may easily see 
that these are matters of much public im- 
portance and should be attended to by the 
people themselves. It is all very well to 
have someone act as nurse, guardian and 
first-of-kin to the public as long as the 
public is too juvenile to take care of itself; 
but it is a fair wish to hope for the day 
when the public can button its own shoes 
and walk alone. 

To sum it up: the greatest of public 
utilities is the landscape; and the public 
ownership of utilities is beginning, where 
it really ought to begin, with the native 
scenery. 



236 



ESSAY NUMBER FOURTEEN 

On the Decorative Use of 
Landscape 



A breezy headland curving parallel Jviih the 
line of a fair horizon; some cat-hoais and luggers 
leaning against the s^p; a smell of acacia TvhisJfed 
along in broken puffs; a Wandering sound of un- 
certain quality passing between the white-capped 
sea and the dusky pine woods afar; roses tossed 
about on emerald sprays; great sea-birds winging 
aloft — and I in the midst of this my Winter Garden^ 
loafing under a yaupon-tree. 

Maurice Thompson, 

"My Winter Garden" 



239 




PINE TREES, CAPE COD 

Frank A. IVaugli 




A PATH IN THE SNOW 
R. E. Sclioulcr 



ON THE DECORATIVE USE OF 
LANDSCAPE 

^^HERE has been a great cry about art 
^^ for art's sake. No phrase of its 

kind has been more widely bandied. 
It is a formula of many meanings, some 
true, some false. The falsity of one of its 
possible meanings may be widely read in 
the fact that almost every art has achieved 
many of its greatest triumphs when acting 
as a mere accessory to some other art or 
utility. Mural decoration is one of the 
noblest branches of painting, and yet it 
is a mere incident to architecture. Archi- 
tecture itself is only the beautification of 
supreme utilities. Sculpture is largely 
decorative, and designed for application to 
architecture or gardening. Even music is 
used largely — one might almost say chiefly 
— to embellish church services, dinners and 
social functions. Does not landscape art 
enjoy similar opportunities? 

Before proceeding to illustrate the 
affirmative answer to this question it seems 

241 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

necessary to emphasize the propriety, the 
importance, the dignity, the profound 
worthiness of this subordinate relationship. 
It is like the relationship of husband and 
wife: the husband may be more seen and 
known by the world, but the wife is equally 
serviceable and necessary. It is like the 
partnership of manhood and gentleness: 
the strong man can be also gentle, and we 
applaud the fortune of such a union of 
qualities in every true gentleman. 

The case should be put more forcibly 
than this. We must all recognize that art 
is ever a secondary matter in life, utility 
having always the prior claim to considera- 
tion. When the necessities of life have 
been satisfied then the soul can be touched 
by the pleasures of beauty. Indeed, it is 
one of the prime functions of all art, and 
one of its greatest glories to invest the 
hard utilities of the material world with 
aesthetic and spiritual joys. Let us believe, 
therefore, that decorative art may be the 
highest of all, in its aims, in its methods 
and in the value of its results. 

Unused as we are to bringing land- 
scape gardening under this point of view, 
we shall see at the first glance that much 

242 



DECORATIVE LANDSCAPE 

of the best work in this field is of a dec- 
orative character, and is made secondary to 
some other art or utility. The planting of 
trees along a city street is a very common, 
very simple and very effective decorative 
scheme. It is at the same time one of the 
regulation schemes of the landscape archi- 
tect. 

As one floats along down the Rhine 
past Mainz, Coblenz, Bonn and Koln, he 
is profoundly impressed with the beauty 
of those Rhine cities. He is struck espe- 
cially with the water fronts, which he 
compares with the coal docks and slaughter 
houses on our American river fronts, 
greatly to the disadvantage of his patriot- 
ism. It may seem anti-climactic to compare 
these beautifully terraced city fronts, with 
their carefully spaced, symmetrically pruned 
trees, to the dado round a dining-room; 
but in the simplicity, directness, and 
adequacy of the decorative effect the river 
front and the masterpiece of the house 
decorator are much alike. 

Certainly landscape gardening like this 
is very much unlike the free and easy 
making of informal pictures for their own 
sakes as one sees it in Franklin Park, 

243 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Boston; Prospect Park, Brooklyn; Druid 
Hill Park, Baltimore; Washington Park, 
Chicago, or Mount Royal Park, Montreal. 
And this difference may be fairly charac- 
terized by calling the method under dis- 
cussion the decorative use of landscape 
gardening. 

Landscape architects nowadays are 
studying whole cities or whole counties at 
once. Mr. Charles M. Robinson goes to 
Honolulu and makes plans for the improve- 
ment in beauty of the whole city and its 
environs; Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey does the 
same thing for Columbia, S. C. ; Mr. Warren 
Manning goes to Ithaca, N. Y., and plans 
for the harmonious development of a tract 
of country fifty miles square, reaching the 
whole length of Cayuga Lake. When 
these men make a beautiful boulevard of a 
useful city street, when they make an in- 
spiring vista of a necessary canal, when 
they bring skylines, building fronts and 
sign-boards into harmonious alignment, 
then may it reasonably be said that they 
are applying the principles of decorative 
art to the ends of their profession. They 
are decorating cities, just as dressmakers 
decorate wasted busts, or as the printers, 

244 



DECORATIVE LANDSCAPE 

with their little conventional figures, dec- 
orate the covers of my pamphlet. 

It is a common saying among painters 
that certain of their craft treat landscape 
in a decorative manner. Some painted 
landscapes are said to have a decorative 
effect, by which it is meant that the prin- 
cipal lines and masses form an arrangement 
which balances and which is beautiful in 
itself without regard to the concrete details 
of the picture. L'Hermite's "Haymakers" 
is an example which comes to mind at the 
moment. Such pictures are apt to be ex- 
tremely effective. It is still more inter- 
esting to note that the best artist pho- 
tographers also exhibit "decorative 
landscapes" in their salons. Mr. Charles 
Vandervelde, for example, one of the best 
landscape artists in America, has a notable 
penchant for this sort of thing. His camera 
has depicted for our delight a number of 
really wonderful pictures of this sort. The 
significance of this fact lies here, that Mr. 
Vandervelde's pictures are taken direct 
from Nature. If his photographs are 
"decorative," therefore it must be that 
Nature herself also has her decorative 
aspects. There must be certain landscapes 

245 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

which in this proper sense are decorative. 

The sympathetic observers of land- 
scape have long ago found this to be true. 
Rather often do they find special views in 
which the trees and rocks offer such lines 
and masses as to form truly decorative 
arrangements. Such views are always 
pleasing, and, when otherwise proper, are 
exceedingly satisfying. 

Let us make a practical application. 
Susan and Benjamin have bought two lots 
in a respectable suburb, and with the help 
of the building and loan association have 
put up a neat colonial house. Mr. Billings, 
the architect, being Benjamin's intimate 
friend, has designed the house inside and 
out to express that spirit of quiet and 
happy domesticity for which Susan and 
Benjamin are noted. Now, these delightful 
young folks have an intelligent taste for 
gardening, and they are ambitious to have 
the thirty feet of lawn in front of the house 
and the fifty feet of garden back of it 
harmonize fully with the architecture and 
express the same spirit. Everyone knows, 
of course, that their sympathetic work in 
their own garden, their personal choice of 
each plant, and their constant domestic 

246 



DECORATIVE LANDSCAPE 

association with the whole, will make the 
garden, of absolute necessity, an expression 
of their own characters. It will thus 
correspond with the house. The garden 
and the house will be one home. But the 
lawns and shrubberies and gardens on this 
small home lot will really be so much dec- 
oration applied to the house. The archi- 
tecture will predominate. The shrubs will 
be as much subordinate as the wall paper 
and picture molding in the library. They 
will be selected and used in the same spirit 
and according to the same principles of art. 
It is an every-day phrase to speak of 
"the decorative arts," meaning the design 
of fabrics, wall papers, the ornamentation 
of house interiors, and the like. These are 
commonly held in light esteem, though 
very erroneously so. Their great utilitarian 
value should give them higher rank, as has 
been suggested at the opening of this 
chapter. But whether they stand at the 
head or at the foot of the list, it will seem 
proper to include a certain part of the art 
of landscape architecture with the other 
"decorative arts." 



247 



ESSAY NUMBER FIFTEEN 

As to Landscape in 
Literature 



Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing 

withholding and free 
Ye publish yourselves to the s^}; and offer \)our- 

selves to the sea! 
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and 

the sun. 
Ye spread and span like the catholic man rvho has 

mightily won 
Cod out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a 

stain. 

Sidney Lanier, 

"The Marshes of Glynn" 



Bookish though we may be, and bred in a 
library though we may have been, there is profit 
in our getting out of the town which is dramatic 
into the country which is lyric. Once in a while 
every bookman ought to subscribe to a fresh-air 
fund for himself and to seize the first chance to 
escape from those pulsing cities of ours, where even 
the grass seems to be living on its nerves. Views 
afoot may be more significant than even the most 
instructive of footnotes, — and Nature publishes 
her poetry in a legible text. 

Brander Matthews. 

"The Independent" 



251 



AS TO LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

HLL the fine arts are closely inter- 
related. They all rest on the same 
body of principles. There are strik- 
ing similarities between painting and 
music. Certain poetry is said to be musical, 
and certain statuary poetic. To some ex- 
tent each art must have inherent possibili- 
ties of interpretation into the language of 
every other art. A more fertile fact is 
that, seeing the various arts are thus apt 
to intermingle, any one is likely to have an 
important influence on every other one. 
In some cases these influences are deep and 
well marked. 

In the present state of gardening art, 
it is too early to say v^hat its influence has 
been on literature, music or dancing. But, 
as literature is the most nearly universal of 
all the arts, the one nearest to all the 
people, and the one in which many streams 
of influence are most easily traced, it may 
be possible to find that landscape has had 

253 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

some effect upon it ; and it may be curious 
and profitable, too, to make the analysis. 

Does landscape have an appreciable 
influence on literature? We may say con- 
fidently that it does. What is pastoral 
poetry, for example, except that in which 
the rural landscape has yielded the flavor, 
if not the substance? But the demonstra- 
tion is much more general, for as literature 
takes its form and color from all the 
materials out of which it is wrought, and 
as landscape is necessarily among these 
materials, so must it necessarily have its 
due and proportionate part in the result. 

Let us consider literature in the mak- 
ing. A good author, of novels, let us say, 
sees his characters living and acting before 
him. The scenes which he depicts are 
vividly seen before his own eyes. The in- 
fluence of every part of the environment 
on each important character must be duly 
considered. Does it make any difference, 
therefore, whether Algernon woos Eloise 
on the rolling prairies of Iowa or amid the 
snowy mountains of the Engadine? Will 
John himself, being one and the same man, 
propose to Mary herself, she being once 
and always the same girl, amid the wintry 

254 



LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

snows of the Adirondacks in the same terms 
he would use were the interesting episode 
to occur in the fertile valley of the Mohawk 
under a pleasant summer sun? And will 
Mary act just the same when the long 
expected happens? Obviously not. 

Suppose the whole scheme is one of 
"human interest," only with no attempt at 
a stage setting. Will the characters still 
behave the same in Texas as in Pennsyl- 
vania? in Oklahoma as in Maine? And 
will the difference of behavior, whatever it 
is, be separable from the physical surround- 
ings of the actors ; that is, from the land- 
scape? Hardly. 

Of course, there are writers of fiction, 
and of other forms of literature, who pay 
slight heed to the stage settings; we may 
say, perhaps, none at all. But such 
writers can hardly be called the best 
artists in their proper fields. 

And, by the way, what do the literary 
critics mean by "local color?" Certainly 
local color is something which suggests the 
locality wherein the action takes place. 
And the presentation of a certain physical 
locality is the presentation of a certain 
landscape. There have been those who 

255 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

have supposed that local color in literature 
is chiefly dialect, but an extended considera- 
tion of the matter, such as we now have no 
time for, will show that they are quite 
wrong. A story told in Irish brogue, for 
example, is not localized thereby. Leaving 
dialect out of the question, it is certain that 
some good writers have the power of 
localizing their stories very vividly. After 
reading certain good novels one feels 
thoroughly familiar with the scenes of the 
events. 

There are some writers who undertake, 
with some success, to interest their readers 
in out-and-out descriptions of the land- 
scapes in which their actors are moving. 
Thomas Hardy may be named as an ex- 
ample. This method is more scientific 
and less artistic, but it may fairly be called 
one way of introducing landscape into 
literature. 

There are other examples of work, 
still more scientific and still less artistic, in 
which the writer aims only at landscape 
description. Thomas Wheatley, in 1770, 
published a very proper and interesting 
work entitled, "Observations on Modern 
Gardening, Illustrated by Descriptions." 

256 



LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

The descriptions were of famous landscapes 
which he had admired. A good many of 
the books on landscape gardening and most 
of those on landscape come in this scientific 
class, presenting landscape in the form of 
didactic, descriptive, measured-and-cut 
pictures. 

Professor Bailey dropped a wise ob- 
servation when he said that there are two 
interpretations of nature (including the 
landscape, of course) — the scientific and 
the poetic. The poetic is apt to be the 
better. In fact, it is bound to be the more 
artistic, because it is expressed in aesthetic 
terms; and since the value of landscape is 
almost wholly aesthetic, such an expression 
is the only one which can be even measur- 
ably satisfactory. 

In poetry, even in the best poetry, 
the feeling for landscape varies between 
limits almost infinitely separated. If we 
take two popular prose poets whose work 
is often compared — Burroughs and Thoreau 
— we shall see this fact beautifully illus- 
trated. Burroughs is a naturalist, and fills 
our eyes with all sorts of birds and cun- 
ning beasts and tiny flowers. Thoreau is 
a man of landscape and weather, and he 

257 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

shows us Walden Pond and windy 
Wachusett and the bean fields. 

Again, this same difference exists be- 
tween the metrical poets. Holmes is the 
naturalist. "The Chambered Nautilus" is 
a microscopic study, and the very apotheosis 
of scientific literature. Riley is the land- 
scapist. "When the frost is on the pump- 
kin and the fodder's in the shock" gives us 
a complete picture of the fields. Perhaps 
another example will be admissible, in 
which we may contrast Burns with Lowell 
and Bryant. The Scotch bard turns up a 
nest of mice and a touching poem with one 
stroke of his plowshare. But the poem 
interprets the sad case of the mice in terms 
of human experience only. There is no 
breath of the Scottish landscape in it. On 
the other hand, Lowell, when he tells of 
the blackbird's song, and Bryant, in his 
classic story of Robert of Lincoln, show 
us long sweeps of swamp and meadow. 
Moreover, these landscapes are spread be- 
fore our senses with all the vividness of a . 
photograph and all the feeling of a painting. 

This same principle offers a means of 
dividing into two groups the thousands of 
books constituting the modern "nature" 

258 



LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

literature. Into one group we could put 
all those that have the outdoor feeling; 
into the other would fall those descriptive, 
scientific, technical, inexpressive works 
which have no atmosphere and no land- 
scape. 

The drama is a species of literature 
which confessedly depends largely on stage 
settings; that is (in many cases), on land- 
scape. The careful playwright gives de- 
tailed attention to this part of his piece, 
and one of his best allies is the scene 
painter. We can all remember, for ex- 
ample, the spectacular production of "Ben 
Hur," seen in some of our largest theaters 
a few years ago; and certainly we would 
say, without disparagement to the play, 
that the beautiful landscape settings for the 
various scenes have over-lived the lines 
and the acting in our memories. 

The situation is somewhat different 
with the plays of Shakespeare. Our 
familiarity with the lines, and our in- 
structed enjoyment of them, make us, to a 
large extent, independent of stage settings. 
We can do without the concrete back- 
ground. The plays were produced orig- 
inally, by Shakespeare and his fellows, 

259 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

without scenery. Occasionally we have 
the Shakespearean method revived in this 
land and time and the plays are acted on 
the bare stage. On the other hand, we have 
witnessed many elaborated productions of 
"Romeo and Juliet," "Winter's Tale," "Tam- 
ing of the Shrew," "Merchant of Venice," 
etc., in which the scenery was a series of su- 
perb pictures well worth seeing for itself and 
without reference to the lines or the acting. 
Yet we have never felt that the scenery 
really interfered with the play itself, or 
that it detracted from the acting or the 
value of the lines. 

Speaking of Shakespeare in this con- 
nection, we may go yet further. Sitting by 
the fire and reading the pages for the mere 
delight of them as pure literature, we still 
have the landscape, a good part of the time 
at least, standing plainly before our eyes. 
The forest of Arden is as plain to us as 
the salt marshes of Hackensack or the sand- 
hills of Nebraska. The mental picture 
which most of us have of Venice was taken 
from the same book, and it is no mean 
picture, either. How vividly, too, can we 
see the island on which Miranda dwelt. 
And even though the geographers say there 

260 



LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

is no seacoast for Bohemia, we are alto- 
gether familiar with the one on which poor 
Perdita was abandoned. 

On the whole, we may conclude that 
the great master of the drama was also a 
master of landscape painting; and it seems 
fairly clear, moreover, that it was in part 
his masterful manner of presenting the 
scenery in his lines that makes his scenes 
so lifelike, and that gives us such a feeling 
of completeness in his work as a whole. 

The Bible, being the very best of 
literature, has in it the very best of land- 
scape. The Jewish people, who gave us the 
bulk of this literature, were not artists 
nor landscape gardeners nor nature lovers. 
But they were poets and prophets and seers, 
and Jehovah spoke to them daily in the 
landscape. The Hebrev/ Psalmist is always 
in close and sympathetic touch with field 
and brook and sky. His Shepherd led him 
in green pastures and beside still waters. 
To him the heavens declared the glory of 
God and the firmament showed His handi- 
work. He had seen, with the fear and joy 
of an open-hearted boy, the great storms 
gather on the hills and break over the 
valleys, for he said: 

261 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

He flew swiftly upon the wings of the wind — 
He made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion 

round about him; 
Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies — 
At the brightness before him his thick clouds 

passed, 
Hailstones and coals of fire. 
The Lord also thundered in the Heavens, 
And the Most High uttered his voice; 
Hailstones and coals of fire. 

Job and the prophets are full of the 
knowledge of the large and magnificent 
aspects of nature. In their loftiest passages 
deep calleth unto deep at the noise of the 
waterfalls, or the air was filled with snow 
like wool. They spoke of him that maketh 
Pleiades and Orion, and turneth deep 
darkness into the morning, and maketh the 
day dark with night, that calleth for the 
waters of the sea, and poureth them out 
upon the face of the earth. And one who 
would confound all argument said: 

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? 
Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep? 
Where is the way to the dwelling of light? 
And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? 
Hast thou entered into the treasuries of the snow? 
Or hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail? 

When we turn to the words of the 
lowly Nazarene, of whom it was said that 

262 



LANDSCAPE IN LITERATURE 

He spoke as never man spake, we find the 
same intimate pleasure in the landscape and 
in its phenomena. There is, indeed, a cer- 
tain important difference between Jesus 
and the prophets, for while to them nature 
was often fearful and awesome, to Him it 
was always near and kindly. Better than 
they He saw in all of it the immediate 
expression of His Father's love. He spoke 
with great tenderness of the sparrows of 
the air and the lilies of the field. 

"Behold a sower went forth to sow; 
and as he sowed some fell by the wayside, 
and the birds came and devoured them : and 
others fell upon rocky places, where they 
had not much earth; and straightway they 
sprang up because they had no deepness of 
earth, and when the sun was risen they 
were scorched, and because they had no 
root they withered away. And others fell 
among thorns, and the thorns grew up and 
choked them; and others fell upon the 
good ground, and yielded fruit, some a 
hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty." 

"He that hath ears, let him hear" this 
story of the Syrian fields. Let him enjoy 
this picture of the barren, stony fields and 
the thorny, weedy wayside, and let him 

263 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

consider ever more that this world-beloved 
parable of the Savior's is as perfect in its 
aesthetic appreciation of the landscape as 
in its ethical inspiration. 

In fact, the whole religion of Jesus is 
a religion of the fields, not of cities nor of 
camps. His life was spent in the out-of- 
doors, under the open sky, walking with His 
disciples through the ripening grain-fields 
or beside the waters of Jordan, or resting 
on the shores of Galilee. His infinitely 
beautiful spiritual character was nourished 
on the beauty of the world about Him. 
There were no art galleries nor symphony 
concerts for Him, except the galleries 
of the hills and the concerts of the stars as 
they sang together above his stony pillow. 
But in all these things His Heavenly Father 
walked and talked with Him, even as He 
would daily speak to us in the same lan- 
guage, would we only listen with quiet de- 
votion and simple open-mindedness. 



264 




fa ^ 

Q 
O 




THE PATH TO THE WOODS 
Mm. //. Z.v7'f 



ESSAY NUMBER SIXTEEN 

On the Beauty of Landscape 
Psychologically Considered 



From this fair home behold on either side 

The restful mountains or the restless sea. 

So the Tvarm, sheltering walls of life divide 
Time and its tides from still eternity. 

Looli on the rvaves — their stormy voices teach 

That not on earth ma^ toil and struggle cease. 

Look on the mountains — better far than speech 
Their silent promise of eternal peace. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, "La Maison d'Or" 

"(7m ist heute Freude an der Natur so selbst- 
verstdndlich, dass es fast unbegreiflich scheint, tvie 
es Zeiten geben konnte, die jene Freude nicht 
kannten, die in der Natur ungeziigelte Wildheit und 
nur im Menschenrverk massvolle Schonheit erblicfi- 
ten. Von einzelnen seit Homer's Zeit geahnt, ward 
in der hoheren Kulturschicht unseres Voltes erst 
etrva seit Goethe die Schonheit der Landschaft 
allegemein er^annt. Unter Rousseau s Einfluss 
bildete sich eine besondere Vorstellung land- 
schaftlicher Schonheit, die noch ganz beherrscht 
Wurde von der Meinung eines Gegensatzes zwischen 
Mensch und Natur — die Schonheit der Kulturland- 
schaft ward als die einzige anerkannt. Umbuschte 
Wiesen, sanfte Hiigel, blumige Pfade, murmelnde 
schldngelnde Bdchlein und *das Auge der Land- 
schaft,' der stille See, in der Feme unter dem 
Schultz der Kirche das saubere Dorf und iippige F el- 
der und glatte Rinder, von Wohlstand und fried- 
lichem Behagen zeugend, das war schone Natur." 
Willy LanGE, "Die Gartengestaltung der Neuzeit" 

267 



ON THE BEAUTY OF LANDSCAPE 
PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

fHAVE been reading several treatises 
on art. It will be unnecessary now 
to give a catalogue of the books, but 
they covered a wide range. Some dealt 
with the history of art, some with criticism, 
some with aesthetics, some with composi- 
tion, and some there were of special and 
technical subjects. I found most of them 
interesting and some truly captivating, 
but with almost every page the strongest 
impression in my mind was of what the 
books did not say. 

This was all on account of the 
prejudice with which I began. I had some 
notions of my own. My mind was full of 
a subject on which these art books were 
expected to throw some light; but though 
there often was, indeed, some agreeable 
illumination thrown upon my prejudices, 
it was remarkable how the light seemed 
always to be directed another way. There 

269 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

seemed to be something really purposeful 
about it. The authors of those books 
evidently regarded my subject as outside 
the reach of their inquiries. One writer, 
indeed, did come squarely up to my subject 
in a paragraph which I shall refer to again ; 
showing that he realized the pertinence of 
it, but he promptly veered away to triter 
things without even waiting to convince 
one of the generalizations which he drew. 

The subject which I had in my mind 
was landscape gardening. Now, I take 
landscape gardening to be very obviously 
entitled to a place among the fine arts. 
It should be practiced and judged according 
to the same principles which govern in 
sculpture or music. The fundamental laws 
of composition (if there be any such) would 
apparently be alike for all the arts, — or, as 
we might better say, for all forms of art. And 
since every kind of art strives after beauty, 
it is quite as important to landscape garden- 
ing as to poetry or painting to understand 
the nature of beauty and the conditions 
under which it is realized. 

Now that beauty has been mentioned, 
we may change the point of view just a 
little and notice that the natural landscape 

270 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

is often beautiful. Whether or not we 
would call it a work of art, a good native 
landscape appeals to the same aesthetic 
faculties and produces the same psycholo- 
gical effects as does a noble piece of archi- 
tecture. The landscape gardener ought 
to know the beauties of natural landscape 
— that's plain enough; — but the psycholo- 
gist studying beauty or the critic studying 
art ought to learn what there is in land- 
scape that delights us. 

The beauty of landscape is capable 
of this simple demonstration, that men are 
willing to pay for it. The little railroad 
carries thousands of persons up Pike's 
Peak, whither passengers go to see the 
world; and a good view of the Sound adds 
five thousand dollars to the price of a 
building lot in Greenwich or Stamford, 
Conn. The money value of landscape in 
the real estate market is too well known 
to be dwelt upon further. 

The professional landscape gardener 
makes landscapes for his customers as a 
painter paints portraits. He receives his 
fee, and he is worthy of his hire. He de- 
livers to his client, if he is an honest man, 
something of value; and the value which he 

271 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

gives is an aesthetic value. If it is com- 
mensurable at all it would have to be 
computed in terms of beauty. 

Before going any further we ought to 
assure ourselves that we are not to be 
confused by talking of different kinds of 
landscape. The gardener may arrange two 
trees, a dozen shrubs and a rood of grass 
in such a manner as to make the whole a 
satisfying work of art, but such a limited 
quantity of materials will hardly form a 
landscape in the same sense in which we 
use that term when we speak of the view 
from Interlaken toward the Jungfrau, from 
the top of the Washington monument, or 
from any other point of vantage. We are 
apparently dealing with two different 
things here, in which elements of beauty 
may be unlike, and it may be important to 
bear this distinction in mind. Inasmuch, 
however, as this inquiry started from the 
standpoint of the landscape gardener, we 
cannot now discard his works; and as it is 
obviously of importance to understand at 
the same time wherein the beauty of 
natural landscape consists, we can not drop 
that part of the subject either. 

In its broad sense, therefore, a land- 

272 




s ^ 

O N 

o 




THE MEADOW BROOK 
C. F. Clarke 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

scape ought to be any view of the world 
out-of-doors. Even a glimpse of Broad- 
way, or a look at the Illinois River from 
Randolph Street, might by courtesy be 
called a landscape. The little compositions 
of the gardener will be landscapes, too, 
in so far as they are to be judged upon the 
principles of aesthetics. At the same time 
we recognize that the common use of the 
word limits it to larger fields of natural 
scenery, or to that scenery in which the 
works of uninstructed nature predominate. 

If now we propose the main question 
and ask what there is in such a landscape 
that is beautiful, or more simply why it 
pleases us, we shall find ourselves in deep 
water immediately. What is beauty, after 
all? and how does anything beautiful please 
us? These are the questions which have 
occupied many, many books, and some of 
those I have been reading. 

Turning aside a moment from this 
inquiry, we may assume the settlement of 
another interesting point which has been 
raised. We may look upon it as hardly 
worth arguing that the beauty of landscape 
rests finally upon the same ground as the 
beauty of painting, sculpture and other art 

273 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

matters; and more specifically we may con- 
sider it axiomatically evident that those 
landscapes that are artificially composed 
and constructed are to be judged as works 
of art, according to exactly the same prin- 
ciples which govern the criticism of archi- 
tecture, poetry or the drama. 

And now, what is beauty? Consider- 
ing how simple and common a word this is, 
we ought to know. Moreover, when we 
think what strenuous analysis has been ap- 
plied to the subject by many of the ablest 
minds of the world — philosophers, meta- 
physicians, psychologists, — ^we should 
expect that the last word had been said. 
Yet, when we come to go over the ground 
and see what all this analysis has yielded, 
the net result seems to be little short of 
chaos. With hundreds of books dealing 
with these matters, more or less directly, 
only a few definitions of beauty have been 
seriously attempted, and these are remark- 
able most of all for their radical disagree- 
ment. If anyone has ever been able to tell 
just what beauty is, he has never succeeded 
in satisfying with his definition even the 
critics of his own school. One of the most 
recent and thoroughgoing writers in this 

274 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

field has begun his book with the statement 
that "it would be easy to find a definition 
of beauty that would give in a few words a 
telling paraphrase of the word." The last 
sentence of the same delightful book asserts 
that "beauty is a pledge of the possible 
conformity between the soul and nature, 
and consequently a ground of faith in the 
supremacy of the good." How well these 
two dicta run together! 

Now we shall be doing Professor 
Santayana an injustice and neglecting our 
own opportunity at the same time did we 
not notice that in the body of the book a 
set definition of beauty is rendered. This 
is it: Beauty "is value positive, intrinsic, 
and objectified; or, in less technical lan- 
guage, beauty is pleasure regarded as the 
quality of a thing." 

The complete criticism of this definition 
would involve another book; but with very 
few words we may fix two important ele- 
ments — First, "beauty is pleasure," — that 
is a feeling within the individual human 
consciousness, not an objective quality in 
the thing we call beautiful. And the second 
phrase of the definition comes back to the 
same point, for beauty is only "regarded 

275 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

as the quality of a thing," and this regard 
is a sort of psychic illusion ; — the thing itself 
does not really possess any quality which 
may be properly called beauty. Although 
modern psychologists nearly all take this 
view of beauty, it is radically different 
from the popular feeling on the subject 
which holds beauty to be a sensible ob- 
jective quality. 

Some old-time attempts at a definition 
of beauty ought to be noticed in passing, 
if only for their curious interest. Beauty 
has been said to be "the objectification of 
the Deity," "the expression of the ideal to 
sense," "the sensible manifestation of the 
good," "the union of the real and the 
ideal," and many more equally sonorous 
and inconceivable things. Schopenhauer 
has called music "the objectification of the 
will." If it is, so is sculpture and landscape 
gardening. 

But none of these definitions helps us 
to any further understanding of the sub- 
ject. We may find it a curious and pleasant 
occupation to compare these dicta with our 
own experiences of the facts; but after 
such a comparison we find ourselves still 
wondering what the objectification of Deity 

276 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

is, or wherein we have seen a union of the 
real and the ideal. 

The most recent and most successful 
attempt to bring our knowledge of beauty 
down to more fundamental grounds has 
been made in the field of psychology, which 
is quite certainly the only field in which this 
investigation can be hopefully cultivated. 
The most satisfactory statement of the 
whole matter that I have seen is that given 
in Miss Puffer's "Psychology of Beauty," 
and the following very brief statement of 
the matter is made with her work in my 
mind's foreground. 

Let us notice, then, that, according 
to this psychological theory, all impressions 
of the world without are experienced in the 
body in the form of nerve or muscle ten- 
sions. Probably there is in every case a 
very close and precise co-ordination of 
muscle tension with nerve tension, though 
it is very difficult in common experience to 
separate them. In fact, the muscular ten- 
sions are consciously felt only in com- 
paratively infrequent instances, yet often 
enough to make this perfectly familiar 
experience to all of us. Let one receive a 
whiff of mignonette or hear a single clear 

277 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

note struck on the piano and he will be 
able to observe the muscular tension which 
immediately ensues. By following such 
experiments only a little way one may 
see that the sight of a sphere or of a lamp 
or a picture immediately produces nerve 
and muscle tensions, for the nerves some- 
times make themselves felt more clearly 
than the muscles. 

Now, certain of these tensions are 
agreeable. Perhaps it would be more ac- 
curate to say that certain degrees of tension 
are agreeable. Indeed, it is one of the 
commonest theories of physical pleasure 
and pain that the former arises from a de- 
gree of nerve excitation which, if carried 
beyond certain limits, produces the latter. 

For the far greatest part, however, our 
physical and mental experiences consist 
not in the reception of single isolated im- 
pressions, as the hearing of one simple 
note or the seeing of one straight line, but 
in the reception of very complicated groups 
and series of impressions. We see a picture 
all at once with thousands of lines, with 
various forms and masses, with lights and 
shadows and, perhaps, with many different 
colors. These hundreds, or even thousands, 

278 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

of items are all taken up and repeated in 
the body as nerve and muscle tensions ; but 
they are at the same time blended into one 
complex of experience, — into one single 
result, — the total effect of the picture. 
Now, when these various tensions, pulling 
in all directions, balance one another, there 
is produced a state of nervous and mus- 
cular equilibrium or rest. And it is pre- 
cisely this state of equilibrium in a highly 
excited muscular and nervous system that 
gives the organic effect of beauty. And 
the beautiful object is the one which will 
produce all these tensions in the highest 
degree and which will at the same time 
produce them with such place and direction 
that they will all fall into a state of 
perfect equilibrium. 

As it is a matter of considerable im- 
portance, especially to the artist (painter, 
architect, or landscape gardener), to know 
by what means the effect of beauty is 
realized, it may pay us to look at the whole 
subject for a few minutes from another 
point of view. My students come to my 
classes in landscape gardening without any 
previous preparation in psychology, and I 
am accustomed to present this matter to 

279 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

them, approximately, in the following 
terms : 

It is important to begin by showing, 
as may be done by very simple kinder- 
garten experiments, that the realm of the 
beautiful is altogether divorced from the 
realm of the true and the other realm of 
the good. Everyone is in the habit of 
considering evidences of fact, and of 
rendering judgment as to what is true and 
what untrue, though the majority of per- 
sons are totally untrained in any method 
of artistic criticism; that is, in the forma- 
tion of judgments as to what is beautiful 
and what is ugly. 

There are four ways in which men 
arrive at a knowledge of facts in the world 
of truth ; and there are four corresponding 
ways in which they arrive at a knowledge 
of beauty. 

First of all, either truth or beauty may 
be recognized by a direct and immediate 
reaction of the organism. A child touches 
a hot stove, and immediately recognizes a 
fact, namely, that the stove is hot. No 
mental process is involved. An angle-worm 
would recognize the same fact if it hap- 
pened to touch the hot stove, and would 

280 




'WOMEN MUST WAIT" 
I'raiik A. IVaugh 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

draw away from the unpleasant thing just 
as the child would. An exactly parallel 
experiment may be made in the realm of 
the aesthetic. If several colored balls are 
offered to a creeping infant, certain colors 
will be chosen in preference to others. 
The organism reacts immediately and 
favorably toward these colors. There is 
no reasoning process here, any more than in 
determining that the stove is hot. A 
moth will fly to the light, certain animals 
will come to certain sounds, the dog howls 
when the organ plays, the bull resents a 
bright red color, while the colored coquette 
at the cake-walk fits herself out with all 
the red she can carry. In no such case is 
there any reasoning about what is attractive 
or repulsive, nor anything at all analogous 
to reason. The animal, no matter what the 
species, finds some sights, sounds, smells 
agreeable and others disagreeable. Perhaps 
it would be putting this into better terms to 
say that certain sights, sounds, smells pro- 
duce agreeable tensions in the body, but 
in reality this does not let us much further 
into the secret. 

Secondly, we learn by experience. 
Experience is known metaphysically as 

281 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

inductive reason. After I have been 
kicked several times by a mule I learn 
that a mule is apt to kick. We "learn to 
like" olives, and we learn to like Wagnerian 
music; and I have seen New Englanders 
who at first were disgusted with the land- 
scape of Kansas, finally learn to like it as 
well as I do. I know that this last illus- 
trative example particularly is complicated 
with other elements, but there is at the 
bottom a certain quantity of beauty 
realized through experience. In a some- 
what different manner, yet in a manner 
truly exemplifying the accumulation of 
experience in aesthetic affairs, we learn 
that blue and orange are agreeable com- 
binations of color, while red and purple are 
disagreeable; or we learn that Acan- 
thopanax pentaphylla makes a better 
group when combined with Rhus copallina 
than when used with Van Houtt*s Spirea. 

Thirdly, we know some things by sheer 
power of deductive reason. The knowledge 
which abstract reason gives us in the world 
of truth has its analogue in the world of 
beauty. Our knowledge that the angles 
of a triangle are equal to two right angles 
is independent of experience. So there 

282 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

are certain abstract relationships in 
aesthetics which any sane person will 
acknowledge upon their plain statement, 
and without argument or illustration. 
Such is the principle of unity. Let anyone 
understand what unity is and he will know 
immediately, and in a sort abstractly and 
intellectually, that unity is a fundamental 
requirement in any work of art, — in any 
painting, poem or garden. What is more, 
he will be able immediately to relate his 
concrete experiences to this abstract 
principle, and from the correspondences 
which he finds to know whether the object 
is beautiful or ugly. At this point we come 
very near to finding pure objective beauty; 
and in so far as the unity of elements in 
any work of art may be instantly appre- 
hended and universally understood and 
accepted, the object might be said to be 
beautiful in itself, as well in the experience 
which it gives to some person. 

Lastly, we accept many weighty 
matters of fact on authority. I know it is 
''nineteen miles from Schenectady to 
Albany," but I never measured it. I know 
that Abraham Lincoln was very tall and far 
from handsome, though he died, alas, before 

283 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

I was born. Daily, almost hourly, we 
commit our very lives to the truth of cer- 
tain propositions which we have never 
verified and never expect to try to verify. 
It would be strange, indeed, if we should 
find nothing corresponding to this in the 
aesthetic world. Some persons are color 
blind. For them color schemes must go 
by authority. Some persons "have a poor 
ear for music." The word of a critic must 
satisfy them as to what is good and what 
bad. We read Shakespeare long before 
we really enjoy it, because we believe on 
authority that it is good. But presently 
we learn to like Shakespeare or the music 
which at first did not please us, and herein 
lies the justification of our application of 
this principle to the world of aesthetics. 
The student always reads good books, 
studies good pictures, listens to good music, 
under the direction of authority, "in order 
to improve his taste." The whole theory 
of the improvement of taste, therefore, 
rests upon our willingness to accept as 
beautiful those objects in which others have 
found beauty. It is the unpardonable 
aesthetic sin, of course, to rely always on 
the judgment of others, and never to know 

284 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

from one's own immediate experience the 
feelings of beauty. It is better to love a 
rag-time cake walk honestly and with one's 
own heart than to admire Chopin because 
someone says one ought. Nevertheless, the 
critics should not be too hard on those who 
accept aesthetic judgments on authority, 
for if it were impossible to do just that the 
critics would be of no further use in the 
world. 

All these long theories may be rather 
tiresome to one who is anxiously waiting 
to hear something about landscape; and 
besides that it does seem superfluous to 
add another discussion of the psychology 
of beauty to the hundreds already in print. 
However, no one can consider thoughtfully 
the question, what is beautiful in landscape, 
without asking almost immediately the 
other question, what is beauty itself in the 
last analysis. The great number of answers 
already proposed for this last question 
would be more satisfactory if there was 
more unanimity among them. And since 
we can not easily take any one of them 
as the basis for our study of landscape 
beauty, it has seemed really necessary to 
review the problem here. 

285 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

When the landscape architect puts his 
materials together, — his lawns, rocks, trees, 
shrubs, pergolas and ponds, — he is com- 
posing pictures in the same sense and in 
much the same way as does the landscape 
painter. He arranges the various elements 
to give certain groupings when seen from 
certain points of view. From each view- 
point he imagines a certain picture, com- 
plete in itself and somewhat definitely 
framed within certain limits. It is evident 
that Professor Santayana does not have 
in mind the landscape architect when he 
speaks of the landscape as "indeterminate," 
and says that "landscape appeals to us as 
music does to those who have no sense of 
musical form." 

Of course, these pieces of landscape, 
artificially produced within limited bounds, 
present the same elements of beauty as 
those found in a painted landscape. Only 
we ought to notice that whatever means 
the painter may have of stimulating the 
imagination, — of exciting strong and 
agreeable tensions in the body, — such 
means are far surpassed by those com- 
manded by the landscape gardener. The 
magnitude counts for something, the three 

286 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

actual dimensions counts for more, the 
presence of living elements — grass, flowers, 
trees, water, — counts for still more. In 
the real landscape garden there is every- 
thing to be enjoyed that the painted picture 
has to give and much besides. 

It is evident also that the effects, rules 
and limitations would be alike in the painted 
picture and in the artificial landscape. Part 
must be balanced against part, light must 
balance shade, color must meet and har- 
monize with color. If a good painting 
produces a high degree of nervous or 
muscular stimulation with a feeling of 
repose, equilibrium, satisfaction, so does 
the landscape architect's masterpiece. 

In my book on landscape gardening I 
have shown that every good landscape 
requires unity, variety, propriety, character 
and finish. These qualities seem to me to 
be fundamental, and to belong not to the 
gardener's landscape alone, but to the 
sculptor's statue or the lecturer's oration. 
It seems hardly necessary here to define 
these terms or to demonstrate these 
qualities in the landscape. The ideas are 
quite simple, and the application for the 
most part obvious. 

287 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

When we turn to the natural un- 
tutored landscape we meet conditions con- 
siderably different. The picture is here, to 
a large degree at least, indeterminate. It 
has no bounds and in general has no com- 
position. If the natural landscape pleases 
us, therefore, it is not by any balance of 
parts producing an equilibrium of bodily 
tensions. The pleasure must come from 
qualities simpler and more elementary than 
those of form. Still, the case is not without 
parallel. Some people, savages at least, 
enjoy formless music; and elementary tones 
or colors, quite without form, may produce 
sensibly agreeable effects even in the most 
sophisticated of us. So, too, certain kinds 
of literature are to a large degree formless. 
Probably in the bulk of our reading we 
are affected chiefly by content, and only 
slightly by form. 

While it seems to imply a contradiction 
of terms to speak of the natural landscape 
as a work of art, we can not deny that it 
does give the true aesthetic experience in 
a very marked and emphatic way. One 
great poet said, 

I will look up unto the hills whence cometh my 
help. 

288 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

And when, at the pinnacle of his inspira- 
tion, he most clearly shadowed forth the 
glories of the heavenly world, he said, 

He leadeth me in green pastures, 
And beside the still waters. 

Indeed, if any acquaintance of ours 
should testify that he had never been 
moved at the sight of any landscape, we 
would deny him altogether. He might not 
understand Beethoven, he might care noth- 
ing for Shakespeare, he might be ignorant 
of sculpture and painting, but if he had 
never known the thrill that landscape can 
give he would be a savage irreclaimable. 
For only the brutes and the lowest savages 
live in the landscape and do not see it. 

But, though it be true that "the 
promiscuous natural landscape has no real 
unity," — that is, no composition of parts, — 
it is still able to affect us most agreeably. 
The "equilibrium of tensions'* cannot be 
secured from the balancing of very diverse 
and complicated elements, but there is 
evidently present the same "aesthetic 
repose." The beholder of a beautiful 
landscape also experiences, in a most 
marked degree, the favorable stimulation — 

289 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the muscular and nervous tensions — which 
accompany the enjoyment of any effective 
work of art. Though these tensions are 
evidently less various than those induced 
by a complicated drama or symphony, they 
are of the same kind, and they often make 
up in intensity what they lack in variety. 

When one stands at a favorable view- 
point and looks out over a far-reaching 
landscape, he may easily convince himself 
of the pleasurable feeling of distance which 
grows up in his own body. As his eye goes 
out, from point to point, seeking ever a 
greater distance, he feels within himself 
also the tension of reaching forward. 
Often the whole body itself is unconsciously 
thrown forward, and one feels an impulse 
to extend the arms, as though one would 
reach out and either clasp the whole land- 
scape physically into one's hands or else 
be projected bodily into it. Was it Addison 
who said that the far outlook on the land- 
scape is the symbol of freedom? This 
feeling of distance is extremely powerful. 
It constitutes one of the most profound 
stimulations (or tensions) of which the 
body is capable, yet always within limits 
which are pleasurable. The feeling is 

290 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

almost as wide as humanity. Certainly 
he would be savage who could stand on 
Mount Washington or Marcy and be un- 
moved by the distant view. 

This feeling, yearning or tension of 
distance can be even more plainly felt in 
looking at the stars. When the sky is clear 
and I look up steadily with peaceful mind 
into the measureless depths of the heavens, 
the way pointed off for us into spaces of 
millions of miles by thousands of twinkling, 
shining worlds, the tension almost trans- 
ports me. My lungs expand, I stretch up 
to my greatest height, and if I were not still 
too self-conscious I would spread forth my 
arms and reach for the stars as the baby 
cries for the moon. I wonder if the dog 
who howls at the moon is not oppressed 
by that same sense of the infinity of space. 
The feeling is wholly immediate and 
irrational. No reasoning is involved. We 
do not require an astronomical calculation 
to tell us that the spaces which our eyec 
penetrate are far beyond our comprehen- 
sion. The heavens declared the glory of 
God and the firmament showed His handi- 
work before any mathematician ever 
guessed how far it is to Mars or Saturn. 

291 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

The enjoyment which we get from a 
sunset is very much the same, — immediate, 
poignant, and characterized by simple but 
emphatic bodily tensions. A sunset, how- 
ever, has some sort of composition, for 
there is a center of interest round which 
all things else are gathered and to which 
all the accessories are obviously referred. 
Then there is likely to be a color develop- 
ment of almost equal appeal, surpassing 
almost any other exhibit of colors known 
to the eye. And we must not forget that 
color is one of the chief materials for pro- 
ducing aesthetic enjoyment. 

While we are speaking of colors in this 
particular connection, we ought to say 
just one word about the rainbow. Not 
since humanity has been human has the 
rainbow made its appeal in vain. The form 
of it has an important effect in making it 
beautiful, but the colors are beyond all 
other comparison, delightful. Nowhere 
in poetry or science is there any other 
measure either for variety or for perfect 
harmony of colors. The pleasure of it 
is indisputable, inevitable. We have only 
to notice that, both in form and coloring, 
the rainbow is peculiarly adapted to pro- 

292 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

duce that "exaltation with repose" — that 
excitation of tensions brought into equi- 
librium — which we have learned to think 
is characteristic of the feeling of beauty. 

We have still another and a very im- 
portant quality of landscape to consider. 
This is the one that psychologists call ex- 
pression, and that the common people speak 
of as association. Almost every work of 
art has these associations which, in our 
minds, always cluster round it. We can 
not hear the Doxology sung without think- 
ing of refreshing hours in church, perhaps 
of particular churches in which we used to 
worship, and of dear friends whom we 
knew there. An old song will sometimes 
almost move us to tears, — not because it 
is so beautiful, but because of the flood of 
recollections which it brings to us. The 
Angelus suggests to us all the hard toil 
of the peasants' life with the faithful piety 
which ennobles it. 

So the landscape is capable of a great 
deal of expression. It may be filled with 
pleasant or moving associations. The 
checkered farms spread out upon the hill- 
sides or snuggling in the valleys suggest to 
us all the pleasant memories of farm life; 

293 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

the little village half hidden among the 
trees fills our minds with thoughts of the 
peaceful, busy human lives centered there; 
the village church, with its aspiring steeple, 
calls on us to remember the worship of 
God, and we wonder if He, too, is not in- 
stantly looking down on the beautiful world 
that He has made and thinking of those 
who have purposed thus to praise Him. 

If the landscape happens to be one 
with which we are familiar, the associa- 
tions are multiplied a hundred-fold, or a 
thousand-fold. And if it happens, — oh, 
rare joy! — that we come back after years 
of separation to a landscape once dear and 
familiar, then, indeed, the tide of recollec- 
tions may sweep us almost away, and the 
exaltation of it all is almost too painful to 
bear. Under such circumstances more 
than one strong man has given way to 
tears. When the army of the defeated Cyrus 
came back from its long and heartrending 
campaign in Persia, the homesick soldiers 
fell down and wept when, from the top of 
a hill, they caught the first view of the sea. 

We have seen that the landscape is 
beautiful. Its beauty is of the same sort 
that we find in music or sculpture, — ^that 

294 



PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 

is, it affects us in the same way. It pro- 
duces in us the same physiological tensions, 
and sometimes the same balance of tensions, 
produced by an agreeable work of art. 
The artificial landscape, a product of human 
thought and invention, has the same quali- 
ties of composition and purpose which any 
work of art may have. The natural land- 
scape, in particular, has unusual power, as, 
for example, through its effect of distance, 
of arousing in us the characteristic effects 
of beauty. And, finally, the landscape 
more than most works of art is infinitely 
rich in the beauty of association. 



295 



ESSAY NUMBER SEVENTEEN 

Suggesting Some Practical 
Applications 



Rich gift of Cod! A ^ear of time! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day^ 
What hues Tvhereli>ith our northern clime 

Makes autumn s dropping rvoodlands ga}f. 
What airs outhlown from ferny dells. 
And clover-bloom and srveethrier smells 
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and 

florvers. 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round 
been ours! 

John Greenleaf Whittier, 

"The Last Walk in Autumn" 



Let the youth make haste to Fontainebleau, and 
once there let him address himself to the spirit of 
the place; he will learn more from exercise than 
from studies, although both are necessary; and if he 
can get into his heart the gaiety and inspiration of 
the woods, he will have gone far to undo the 
evil of his sketches. A spirit once well strung up 
to the concert pitch of the primeval out-of-doors will 
hardly dare to finish a study and magniloquently 
ticket it a picture! 

R. L. Stevenson. 

in "Fontainebleau" 



299 



SUGGESTING SOME PRACTICAL 
APPLICATIONS 

^^HERE are two ways of studying 
^^ landscape, as there are of studying 

every art. These may be somewhat 
accurately called the professional and the 
amateur methods. The professional art 
student expects to earn a livelihood by 
painting pictures or designing buildings. 
The amateur expects only to learn to enjoy 
pictures, architecture or music. More 
strictly speaking, the amateur expects to 
enlarge his own capacities of enjoyment, 
and, if he have a proper flavor of altruism 
in him, he doubtless hopes to make his 
enlarged capacities and powers transmit 
some true satisfactions to other lives. 

An intelligent appreciation of land- 
scape seems to have been too rare among 
all sorts of art students, both professionals 
and amateurs. It has been thought quite 
necessary that a good actor should know 
literature and painting and music, but 
Joseph Jefferson has been almost the only 

301 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

one to own a well-trained and vitalizing 
contact with landscape. The ambitious 
music student enriches his mind with the 
best of literature and with frequent visits 
to the art galleries. He ought also to know 
the unwritten literature of the forests and 
the unpaintable pictures of the evening 
sky. The professional landscape archi- 
tects certainly, of all the artist-world, ought 
to make a comprehensive study of the 
natural landscape in preparation for their 
careers. Yet, as one reads President Eliot's 
memoirs of his son, he feels as though 
this artist stood almost alone in the 
breadth and depth of the foundations he 
laid. We can remember, to be sure, that 
the two men who did most to advance 
landscape art in America — Downing and 
Olmsted — ^were devoted and lifelong stu- 
dents of the fields, the hills, the rivers and 
the trees. 

Most of all, however, should the land- 
scape be better appreciated and more 
generally used as a means of widening and 
enriching the lives of the laity, — of common 
men and women, — street-car conductors, 
farmers and unimaginative real estate 
speculators. It is one of the crying de- 

302 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

ficiencies of our American system of edu- 
cation that it does so little to develop 
the aesthetic side of the ordinary citizen. 
When one goes to Berlin, for example, and 
sees there the beautiful theaters accessible 
to the poorest classes, the magnificent art 
galleries practically free to all, and the 
wealth of public concerts in which the best 
classic music is truly popularized, he begins 
to feel that democratic America still has 
something to do for her citizens. 

The best things that have been done 
in this country, however, have been in the 
direction of what we may call the popular- 
ization of landscape. The park systems of 
Boston, Hartford, New York and Chicago 
have made beautiful landscape a daily in- 
gredient in hundreds of thousands of lives 
otherwise almost untouched on the aesthetic 
side. This good work ought to be extended, 
and the good things thus developed ought 
to be systematized and more widely applied. 
The schools ought to recognize the value 
of landscape, as they now recognize the 
value of drawing, literature and music. 
We would consider that school very 
grossly mismanaged which should exist 
for years beside a great library without 

303 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

making use of it, or near a well-stocked 
art gallery without maturing intelligent 
plans for bringing its student body into 
vital touch with such a means of uplift. 
Some city schools, in fact, are be- 
ginning to use the parks; but, for the most 
part, the effort is desultory and lacking 
any great purpose. The parks are used 
mostly by way of picnics for primary 
grades. Occasionally the kindergartners 
visit the zoological gardens to see the 
animals. Still more seldom does the botany 
class study trees and shrubs in the parks, 
or the geology pupils come to see where the 
glaciers planed away the rocks. Yet the 
parks are full of pictures — real living 
pictures; — and the country roundabout, 
accessible to most schools, contains larger 
and sublimer pictures without end. The 
ordinary school children do not find it a 
defect that these pictures are not recognized 
as classics and that they are not classified 
and set down in the art catalogues. Only 
the sophisticated teachers think it im- 
possible, or even unworthy of them, to 
teach such things, seeing they are not 
stamped with the authority (and the 
blight) of conventionality. Some of these 

304 







H 

a 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

people would be afraid to breathe fresh air 
if they did not find the process tediously 
described and justified in the text-books 
of physiology. 

Yet the natural landscape is full of 
poetry and of wit, and of a divine beauty. 
For, in a certain good sense, this beauty 
is divine, considering its immediate origin 
from God; and in such a way may claim 
a pre-eminence over the beauty of music 
or of sculpture. Does not such beauty have 
its pedagogic value? And can it not be 
turned to educational account as well as 
could free theaters or concerts? To both 
questions we may answer yes. 

The precise methods of turning these 
resources to account can not be so readily 
pointed out, seeing they have not been the 
subject of endless experiments, as have 
music and art study. Yet, at first sight, it 
seems that there would be no very great 
difficulty in adapting the ordinary methods 
of schoolroom art study to the utilization 
of our richer resources in landscape. A 
general direction toward beautiful things 
is about all that can be given anyway. 
And it would seem quite as easy to tell the 
child that the river which he sees and loves 

305 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

is beautiful, as to tell him that the Sistine 
Madonna, of which he has seen only poor 
copies, is beautiful. Or, if more instruction 
is required, it would seem to be quite as 
easy a task to explain to the pupil wherein 
the rugged sky-line, with its countering 
points of emphasis, is beautiful as to explain 
to him the beauties of Dante, written in 
a language which he knows not, and con- 
ceived in an age which his own generation 
can not understand. In any event, the 
pupil gains nothing until there awakens in 
his own soul some response to the beauties 
set before him by his teacher. The success 
of this sort of teaching is measured exactly 
by the breadth and depth of this response, 
and not, as many persons seem to imagine, 
by the conventional values placed upon 
certain classic properties (epics, pictures 
or statues) which are used in the edu- 
cational processes. And it seems clear to 
the writer, who has had some experience 
in teaching, that a quicker and more natural 
response is to be expected toward the 
simple and familiar, though sometimes sub- 
lime, beauties of the neighboring woods, 
fields and hills than toward the unfamiliar 
and recondite beauties of literature, 

306 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

sculpture or music. As a teacher, I must 
say that I would like to see the experiment 
fairly tried of establishing in some good 
school a course in landscape study on the 
same basis as the present courses in litera- 
ture and art. I should expect it to be 
productive of equally good results ; and I 
should expect the methods, once worked 
out, to be capable of a much wider applica- 
tion. 

For those amiable and practical persons 
who always prefer a concrete statement, I 
will append the transcript of a very modest 
scheme which has already been successfully 
tried in the schools of Amherst, Mass., and 
in various other schools. The memo- 
randum here reproduced is taken directly 
from the program placed in the hands of 
the teachers. 

PROGRAM OF SCHOOL EXERCISES 

PROLOGUE 

Amherst is commonly considered to be one 
of the most beautiful towns in New England; 
that is to say, one of the most beautiful in 
America. This being so, we who live here 
ought to know about the beauties of the place 
and ought to get some daily enjoyment from 
these surroundings. 

307 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Moreover, every child ought to learn to see 
the beautiful things in the world. Unfor- 
tunately, many children see only the pictures 
in the Sunday papers. The following ex- 
ercises all call attention to things which are 
beautiful and call for some judgment on them. 

METHOD 

At least one exercise each week should be 
given from the following program. The 
exercise should be posted on the blackboard, 
and suggestions given by the teacher. On the 
following day reports should be made by 
pupils and discussed in the schoolroom. On 
the next day pupils should enter the results in 
their permanent note-books. Pictures should 
be included wherever practicable. Thus, at 
the end of the term, each pupil will have a 
note-book entitled "Beautiful Amherst," which 
would be of considerable value. 

PROGRAM 

1. TREES 

Where is the most beautiful tree in Amherst? 
What kind of a tree is it? How old? Who 
planted it? Give any other information. 
Where is the most beautiful row or group of 
trees in Amherst? Also the most beautiful 
piece of woods? 

2. BROOKS 

Make a sketch map of the town of Amherst, 
locating and naming all the streams, including 
the smallest brooks, as far as possible. Where 
is the prettiest stream in Amherst? Why is it 
the prettiest? 

308 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

3. PONDS 

Name and locate all the ponds in Amherst. 
Which one is the prettiest ? Why? 

4. HILLS 

What are the highest hills in Amherst? How 
high are they? Which ones are most beautiful? 
Why do you think so? 

5. ROADS 

Where is the prettiest piece of road or street 
in Amherst? If there are trees on this street, 
tell what kind they are. 

6. PUBLIC BUILDINGS 

What is the most beautiful and dignified 
public building in Amherst? This includes 
the Town Hall, school buildings, college 
buildings, etc. Who desigfned the building 
which you think best? 

7. PRIVATE PLACES 

What is the prettiest private place in Amherst? 
What is the prettiest and most dignified 
dwelling house? Name the most attractive 
features of these places. 

8. FARMS 

Where is the most attractive looking farm in 
Amherst? and what makes it so? 

9. VIEWS 

Where can you find the most extensive view 
in Amherst? What can you see from there? 
Where is the most attractive spot in town as 
regards outlook? Name several places which 
offer specially fine views. 

309 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 



10. PICNIC GROUNDS 

Name and locate all the best picnic grounds 
in Amherst and tell what attractions each one 
has. 

11. THE COMMONS 

Draw a map of one of the commons: Center, 
North Amherst, East Amherst or South 
Amherst, Tell what could be done to im- 
prove the common. 

12. VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT 

What things could be done to make Amherst 
more beautiful? 



Various teachers who have taken 
these exercises report gratifying results. 
The essential value of the work lies in the 
fact that each exercise calls the attention 
of the pupil to certain beautiful objects and 
in such a way as to lead him to compare 
and discriminate on the basis of beauty. 

Another form of exercise which I have 
tested with college students, but which is 
capable of adaptation to grammar and high 
schools, consists in studying photographs 
of landscapes. Of course, it might be 
assumed at once that no photograph is as 
good as the landscape from which it is 
taken, but this assumption is not quite true. 

310 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

A clever photographer of artistic tempera- 
ment, like Mr. Charles Vandervelde or 
Mr. William T. Knox, will frequently make 
a photograph which, in important artistic 
qualities, is better than the landscape itself. 

But the study of such photographs, 
supposing them to be well composed and 
happily rendered, has several advantages 
over the study of the natural landscape. 
Each photograph presents a single point 
of view and a single direction and scope of 
view. The elementary student, therefore, 
is not confused by the multiplicity of 
pictures or the uncertainty of several ele- 
ments. The pictures being fixed are more 
easily analyzed or criticised. 

This careful analysis and specific 
criticism on the part of the pupil are essen- 
tial to the success of such exercises. In 
order to secure these results, I supply my 
pupils with a number of searching questions, 
which I require them to answer in con- 
siderable detail. The answers are made 
in writing, and are finally read and dis- 
cussed before the entire class and in the 
room with the pictures. 

My last exercise of this sort was based 
on a photographic salon of about eighty 

311 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

pictures, made by a dozen of the best 
artist photographers in America, and the 
results were very satisfactory. The 
pictures were greatly enjoyed; and the 
analysis and criticism of them not only 
deepened this present pleasure, but en- 
larged also the pupils' capacity for further 
enjoyment. For the benefit of other 
teachers, I will add just here a copy of the 
questions as put into the hands of each 
pupil. 

THE COLLECTION IN GENERAL 

1. How much material is usually selected for 
a picture? How does the amount of ma- 
terial affect the pictorial result? 

2. What definite expedients are adopted to 
secure unity? 

3. What is done for the sake of variety? 

4. Are any definite schemes of composition 
preferred? 

5. What materials are preferred, as trees, brooks, 

hills, etc.? 

6. What attention is paid to sky line? 

7. How are trees treated with respect to group- 
ing, distance, etc.? 

8. What consideration is given to atmosphere? 
In how many pictures is the condition of the 
atmosphere or weather distinctly rendered? 

9. How many pictures are sharp, clear and 
realistic? and how many are more or less 

312 




% 



Q 

«»: 

o 
o 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

impressionistic? What are the advantages 
of each method? 

10. How many of the compositions shown would 
it be practicable to reproduce in park con- 
struction ? 

11. Classify the compositions as natural, pictur- 
esque and formal. How many in each class? 



REGARDING INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS 

1. Characterize the work of each artist. Mention 
the individualities of each, especially the 
strong points. 

2. Point out individual peculiarities in, — 

(a) Choice of materials; 

(b) Method of composition; 

(c) Method of treatment, as realistic, 
poetic, etc.; 

(d) Photographic methods and processes. 

3. Do the artists seem to be affected by their 
landscape surroundings? Is there any local 
geography apparent in the individual collec- 
tions? 

4. Whose work do you personally prefer? and 
why? 

5. Which do you consider the best and second- 
best pictures in the entire collection? 

When the student of landscape has 
taken to the study of pictures he can well 
afford to go beyond the photographers. 
The great landscape painters have many 
things to tell. For them the landscape has 

313 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

always been an inspiration and a reservoir 
of beauty. From it they have drawn the 
models for their best works. What is there 
in the world out-of-doors which has ap- 
pealed to Turner, Millet, Corot, Inness or 
Thwachtman? It is worth while for the 
amateur to try to answer this question. 

So I have sent my pupils to the 
painters, and especially to Corot, not be- 
cause painted landscapes are better than 
native pictures, but because the selective 
skill of the trained artist points out what 
is best in landscape, and because, also, his 
aptitude in composition often shows what 
arrangements are most pleasing. Because 
I happen to have at hand an excellent col- 
lection of reproductions from Corot, I 
make their study an annual exercise for my 
students, and I will give here once more a 
list of questions which each pupil is re- 
quired to answer at length from his study. 

OUTLINE FOR A STUDY OF COROT'S 
PICTURES 

LAND AND WATER 

1. To what extent does he use water in his 
landscape? 

2. In what forms — ponds, brooks, etc.? 

314 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

3. Are his pictures mostly of wild or cul- 
tivated land? 

4. What kind of land does he choose to 
paint — plains, rough land, mountains, etc.? 

5. Does he show any special preferences with 
respect to contour, grade or topography? 

GENERAL COMPOSITION AND 
TREATMENT 

6. Are objects scattered or massed? Criticise 
in detail. 

7. What of chiaroscuro? 

8. What attention is given to conditions of 
weather? 

9. To the hour of the day? In how many 
pictures can the hour of the day be fairly 
known without reference to title? 

TREES AND THEIR TREATMENT 

10. To what extent are trees used in Corot's 

landscapes ? 

11. To what extent are they grouped? 

12. How are the groups composed? How 
many trees? How many species? 

13. Are these groups formal or informal? 

14. How are the groups placed — background, 
middleground or foreground? 

15. What species are most frequently used? 

16. Are the specimens chosen formal, natural 
or picturesque? 

17. To what extent are shrubs used, and in 
what manner? 

18. To what extent and in what manner does 
he use grass, flowering plants, etc.? 

315 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

Similar exercises can easily be arranged 
on the basis of any available material, — for 
example, an accessible art gallery, or a set 
of prints kept in the village library. A well- 
selected collection of Copley prints is ex- 
cellent, and even a set of Perry pictures cost- 
ing one cent each will be well worth one or 
two exercises. 

In all this study, however, the pupil 
must not forget the natural landscape. His 
studies are valuable only in proportion as 
they open the natural landscape to his un- 
derstanding and enjoyment. Outdoor 
exercises are therefore best, and must never 
be omitted from any course of instruction. 
For students of some experience and 
maturity, I have used a form of exercise 
which we call the "landscape links." It is 
modeled on the golf links, — one of the im- 
portant uses of the golf links being said to 
be the exhibition of the landscape. 

For this form of instruction it is neces- 
sary to choose a tract of land from one 
mile to ten miles in length and breadth, 
furnished with a reasonable variety of 
scenery. The better the landscape and the 
distant view, the more fully are all purposes 
fulfilled. On such a territory the leader 

316 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

of the exercise will establish a series of 
stations, say, six to two dozen, correspond- 
ing to the holes of the golf links. Each 
station will be chosen with reference to 
some attractive or instructive bit of land- 
scape or outlook; and the direction of the 
view, as well as the precise point of view, 
will be indicated by a suitable marker. Of 
course, a great deal depends on the tactful 
selection of the successive stations. They 
should offer a pleasing variety of pictures, 
and, if possible, they should be selected 
and arranged with relation to some 
fundamental principle. There ought to be 
some development, sequence and climax in 
the series. For example, it is possible to 
start with restricted views, showing only 
foreground, then to reach more extensive 
views in which the principal objects occupy 
middle ground, thence to views with inter- 
esting backgrounds, reaching for a climax 
some point of view offering a far distant 
outlook. Sometimes it is possible to start 
with the highly domesticated views in a 
village street, passing through the more 
open suburbs, thence through open fields, 
and reaching a satisfactory climax in some 
wild ravine or on some wooded hill. 

317 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

The educative value of such an exer- 
cise depends largely on the critical analysis 
and appreciation of each picture and of the 
whole series. The following series of ques- 
tions will show how I have had my own 
students work on such pastimes. 

THE LANDSCAPE LINKS 

PARTICULAR VIEWS 

1. Photograph or sketch each view. 

2. Sketch a ground plan of each view. 

3. Characterize each view and classify the 
series. 

4. Criticise each view and classify the series. 

5. Each point of view might have been better 
chosen; criticise. 

6. Which is the most pleasing view? Why? 

7. Is the value of any view influenced by 
extraneous associations? 

THE WHOLE COLLECTION 

1. Is there any order, sequence, climax or 
other relation in the series? 

2. Might any rearrangement, addition or 
omission improve the series? 

3. On what principle should this series of 
views be organized? 

GENERAL QUESTIONS 

L Which views are best, — foreground, middle- 
ground or distance? 

318 



PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 

2. At what distance do trees give the best 
effects? Running water? Still water? 
Lawn ? Meadow ? 

3. Would different atmospheric or weather 
conditions make different answers neces- 
sary to any questions on this sheet? For 
instance? 

4. Would this course of views be worth while 
in midwinter? 

Of course, these suggestions will by no 
means exhaust the subject, and I hope they 
have not tired the reader. They will show, 
at any rate, that the native landscape, so 
far from being diffuse and lacking in 
pictorial qualities, is just as capable of 
critical enjoyment as the works of Whistler 
or Rodin; or that, instead of being outside 
the reach of intelligent study, the land- 
scape, in fact, offers an incomparable and 
inexhaustible material for the development 
of the aesthetic faculties. In particular, I 
hope it will seem that these opportunities 
are accessible to the pupils of the common 
schools, who, most of all, lack and deserve 
aesthetic instruction, and whom I would 
most gladly serve. 



319 



Summary 



SUMMARY 

fF the reader is not in too great haste 
to lay down this book, the author 
would ask the privilege of a final 
word. The seventeen essays which comprise 
the volume seem to be a trifle discursive in 
their nature, and the reader, who perhaps 
has not been hypnotically fascinated with 
them, may have failed to follow the thread 
of argument which ought to hold them all 
together. 

We begin our talks together under 
the trees or in the open fields with a prime 
endeavor to show that the world is filled 
with beauty and that this beauty is of the 
very greatest import to us. It is funda- 
mental to our spiritual and intellectual 
existence, — almost necessary to our very 
physical life. These beauties of the out- 
door world are argued to be our chief source 
of aesthetic sustenance and growth. Yet 
this enormous wealth is largely unappro- 
priated, and little understood. 

On careful examination we find also 
that these good things are not confined to 
any elect persons, to any favored country, 

323 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

to any time or season. God looked on the 
world and saw that it was good. The most 
critical of us are obliged to agree with him. 
The world is beautiful in toto, in all its 
parts, and in all its phenomena. The 
weather is good, no matter how often 
polite conversation may run to the contrary, 
and every change, from equinox to solstice, 
offers a new spectacle of delight. 

This occupies us through the first five 
essays of the book. And then we come to 
landscape gardening, and for two quite 
competent reasons. The first reason is 
that these essays were all conceived from 
the standpoint of the landscape architect, 
from which point it is altogether natural 
and proper to discuss some more practical 
matters belonging to a highly technical art. 
The second reason is this: that as success- 
ful landscape making depends absolutely on 
a well-attuned love of natural scenery, so 
the artificial landscape, when sympathet- 
ically designed, adds new beauties to 
Nature's painting. It is "the art which 
doth mend nature." It clarifies and epi- 
tomizes the pictures which we see some- 
times dubiously and imperfectly rendered 
in field and wood and mountain chain. So 

324 



SUMMARY 



the man who loves the natural landscape 
should find a double joy in the refined, har- 
monized and humanized renderings of the 
same themes as offered by the artists of 
lawn and lake and forest, while, on the 
other hand, the best landscape architects 
have always derived their main inspiration 
from the beauties of nature. 

These discussions of landscape garden- 
ing occupy essays six to eleven; where- 
upon we are ready to proceed to some 
practical applications. The nature lover 
simply enjoys the contemplation of such 
beauties as he finds offered; the landscape 
gardener tries to create, or at least to as- 
semble and organize, such pictures for 
himself and for those who appreciate 
them. But he, and we also, wish to go 
further and to make this art the means of 
many practical benefits to society. We 
want to make the cities and the open coun- 
try more beautiful and comfortable, as 
we have said in Essay Twelve; and we want 
to use this tremendous capital of beauty 
for the instruction of every child in the 
public schools, as outlined in Essay Seven- 
teen. Incidentally, we notice, in Essays 
Fourteen and Fifteen, some applications 

325 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

of landscape knowledge in other arts. 

Then the student of such matters who 
is deeply interested in these themes will 
want to examine the foundations of all 
such knowledge. The psychology of the 
subject will appeal to him. This is all 
the more likely if he be a teacher. Other 
people may find it easier and quite as 
profitable just to omit Essay Fifteen. 

Finally, once more, let us all enjoy to 
the utmost the good and beautiful world 
we have had given to us. We will daily 
praise it and give God thanks. Thus will 
we be prepared to enjoy a better world if 
God sees fit to give us one. 



326 



Index 



Index 

A 

PAGE 

American Landscape 99 

American Landscape Gardeners .... 153 

American Landscape Gardening . . . 115 

American Masterpieces 181 

Amherst, Massachusetts 307 

Art and UtiHty 242 

Art for Art's Sake 241 

Art Which Mends Nature 85 

Applications 301 

Association 293 

Authority on Beauty 283 

B 

Bailey, L. H 72, i75. 257 

Beautiful Amherst 307 

Beautiful vs. Picturesque 36 

Beauty, Its Nature 273 

Beauty of Landscape 269 

Berlin, Germany 303 

Bible, The 261 

Billboard Nuisance 217 

Brooks '. , 49 

Bryant," W. C 258 

Burnham, Daniel H 189 

329 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

PAGE 

Burns, Robert 258 

Burroughs, John 257 

C 

Central Park, New York 184 

Chiaroscuro gi 

Chicago Parks 197 

Chicago World's Fair 186 

City Design 244 

City Planning 208 

Climate 75 

Cloud Pictures 60 

Colonial Gardening 116 

Connecticut 108 

Conservation of Resources 220 

Corot's Paintings 314 

Country Planning 207 

Criticism 139 

Criticism, Purposes of 145 

Criticism, Difficulties of 145 

Cyclones 63 

D 

Decorative Use of Landscape 241 

Diversity of American Landscape .... 104 

Downing, Andrew Jackson . 120, 131, 155, 200 

Downing's Disciples 156 

Drama and Landscape 259 

Dramatic Criticism 142 

330 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Elements of Landscape 43 

Eliot, Charles 170, 195 

Environment, Power of 20 

Exercises for Students 312 

Experience of Beauty ........ 281 

Expression 293 

F 

Farm Improvements 218 

Far Outlook 290 

Fields 105 

Field of Criticism 139 

Franklin Park, Boston 190 

Fruit Trees 214 

G 

Gallagher, Pcrcival 173 

Geography and Landscape 107 

German Cities 243 

Graceland Cemetery, Chicago 192 

Great Lakes, The 105 

H 

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 201 

Health 75 

Historic Spots 216 

Holmes, Oliver W 258 

Homesickness 23 

331 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

■*• PAGE 

Improvement of the Open Country .... 207 

Italian Style in America 124 

J 

Jensen, Jens 174, 198 

Jesus and the Landscape 262 

Job 262 

K 

Kansas Roads 212 

Keney Park, Hartford 196 

Kinosuke Adachi (Quoted) 100 

Knowledge of Beauty 280 

L 

Lakes 50 

Landscape Art 87 

Landscape Gardeners 153 

Landscape Gardening 85 

Landscape Gardening and the Weather . . 79 

Landscape in Literature 253 

Landscape Links 316 

Landscape Ownership 228 

Landscape Resources 129 

Landscape Study 316 

Landscapes, Definition 58 

. Laws of Composition 270 

Learning to Like Things 282 

332 



INDEX 

PAGE 

L'Enfant 200 

Life, Relation to Landscape 15 

Literary Criticism 140 

Literature and the Landscape 253 

Local Color 255 

Looking at the Sky 57 

Lowell, J. R 258 

M 

Manning, Warren H 172, 201 

Masterpieces of Landscape Architecture . 181 

McPherson, Kansas 212 

Methods of Teaching 305 

Metropolitan Park Reservation, Boston 195 

Ministry of Trees 31 

Mountains 45, 106 

Mount Mansfield 47 

Mount Royal, Montreal 189 

Mount Vernon 234 

Muddy Brook Parkway 192 

N 

National Forest Reserves 229 

O 

Obstacles in Landscape Gardening .... 92 

Olmsted Brothers 172, 196 

Olmsted, Frederick L., Sr., 123, 132, 160, 190, 191 

333 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

PAGE 

Olmsted, Works of i6i 

Olmsted's Work Characterized 163 

Olmsted and Vaux 89 

Open Country 207 

Ownership of Scenery 227 

P 

Painting and Landscape 245 

Painting Compared With Landscape . 129 

Parker, Geo. A 169, 196 

Parks of Chicago 197 

Parks, Use of 304 

Parmentier, Andre 154 

Pedagogic Methods 305 

Photographs of Landscapes 310 

Photography and Weather 78 

Photography of Skies 59 

Picnic Grounds 236 

Picturesqueness 36 

Plains 51 

Piatt, Chas. A 124, 173 

Playgrounds 231, 235 

Poetry of Trees 34 

Practical Applications 301 

Preservation of Scenery 216 

Professional vs. Amateur . 301 

Psychology 269 

Public Ownership 228 

Puffer, Miss (Quoted) 277 

334 



INDEX 

PAGE 

Rainbow 292 

Repton, Humphrey 121, 160 

Reservations of Scenery 230 

Riley, James Whitcomb 258 

Rivers 48 

Roads 209 

Roadside Trees 214 

Robinson, Charles M 244 

Rural Improvements 218 

S 

Santayana, Professor (Quoted) . . . . 88, 275 

Sargent, Professor C. S 175 

Scenery Ownership 227 

Scenic Roads 215 

School Exercises 307 

Scott, Frank J 157 

Seasonal Changes 90 

Shakespeare 259 

Simonds, O. C 173, 193 

Sky, The 57 

Snowfall 62 

Stars, The 63 

State Parks 231 

Stiles, W. A 175 

Study of Paintings 314 

Sublimity 102 

Summary 323 

335 



THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL 

PAGE 

Sunset 292 

Surveys of Resources 220 

T 

Thoreau, Henry D 258 

Town Parks 235 

Tree Planting 214 

Trees 31 

Trees in America 106 

U 

Unity of Landscape 289 

V 

Vaux, Calvert 169 

Vandervelde, Chas 245 

Versatility of American Landscape .... 104 

Village Improvement 207 

W 

Warner, Charles Dudley 15 

Washington, D. C 199 

Weather . . 71 

Whatley, Thomas 256 

Wildness of American Landscape .... 103 

World's Fair at Chicago 186 

Worship of Trees 36 

336 



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